Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PROTEUS, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PROTEUS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Poet bred in saadi's school
Last Line: Of dust of abasement.


Poet bred in Saadi's school
Can wind the world off any spool,
Knows the lore of more & less.
Brahma stooped from the sky
& made the sun of the slime.
He made, of a toad, an archangel,
Of bats & bugs, a god as well,
If he should wash your eyes with rue,
You would remember
How hated were the forms you clasp,
And that once you adored the mummies,
Trust nothing that you see
It changes while you look
Do not think him a dunce
Who wore bells & foolscap once
He is the teacher of ages
For there is no wise man
Men are vascular only,
Constructive men only,
Pipes or channels, clay or crystal
Thro' them rolls the stream today
To roll tomorrow otherwheres
And leave these dry & mean
As high as thy perception goes,
Thou canst not overpraise the great
Yet grander heroes shine beyond.
We tread the ladder's lowest round
And before the Deity
Thy gods are pismires

Flow flow the waves hated
Accursed adored!
The waves of mutation;
No anchorage is.
Sleep is not, death is not,
Who seem to die, live.
House you were born in
Friends of your youth
Old man & young maid
Early toil & its gains
They are all vanishing
Fleeing to fables
Cannot be moored
See the stars through them,
The treacherous marbles
Know, the stars yonder
The stars everlasting
Are fugitive also
And emulate, vaulted,
The passing heat-lightning
or fireflys flight

When thou dost return
On the wave's circulation
Beholding the shimmer
The wild dissipation,
And out of endeavor
To change & to flow,
The gas become solid
And phantasms & nothings
Return to be things
And endless imbroglio
Is law & the world,
Then first shalt thou know
That in the wild turmoil
Horsed on the Proteus
Only canst thou ride to power.
And to Endurance.

Much thou must suffer
Be shocked & derided
Lose faith to gain faith,
Ah worse! must I say it?
Lose thy virtue, lose thy soul,
To gain the incorruptible.
The scale in this world
Of greatness & height
Is reversed in the other.
Crown of power, is fashioned
Of dust of abasement.





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