No More Learning

INDEPENDENCE[15]

My life more civil is and free
Than any civil polity.

Ye princes, keep your realms
And circumscribed power,
Not wide as are my dreams,
Nor rich as is this hour.

What can ye give which I have not?
What can ye take which I have got?
Can ye defend the dangerless?
Can ye inherit nakedness?

To all true wants Time's ear is deaf,
Penurious states lend no relief
Out of their pelf:
But a free soul--thank God--
Can help itself.

Be sure your fate
Doth keep apart its state,
Not linked with any band,
Even the noblest of the land;

In tented fields with cloth of gold
No place doth hold,
But is more chivalrous than they are,
And sigheth for a nobler war;
A finer strain its trumpet sings,
A brighter gleam its armor flings.

The life that I aspire to live
No man proposeth me;
No trade upon the street[16]
Wears its emblazonry.


DING DONG[17]

When the world grows old by the chimney-side
Then forth to the youngling nooks I glide,
Where over the water and over the land
The bells are booming on either hand.

Now up they go ding, then down again dong,
And awhile they ring to the same old song,
For the metal goes round at a single bound,
A-cutting the fields with its measured sound,
While the tired tongue falls with a lengthened boom
As solemn and loud as the crack of doom.

Then changed is their measure to tone upon tone,
And seldom it is that one sound comes alone,
For they ring out their peals in a mingled throng,
And the breezes waft the loud ding-dong along.

When the echo hath reached me in this lone vale,
I am straightway a hero in coat of mail,
I tug at my belt and I march on my post,
And feel myself more than a match for a host.


OMNIPRESENCE

Who equaleth the coward's haste,
And still inspires the faintest heart;
Whose lofty fame is not disgraced,
Though it assume the lowest part.


INSPIRATION

If thou wilt but stand by my ear,
When through the field thy anthem's rung,
When that is done I will not fear
But the same power will abet my tongue.
MISSION

I've searched my faculties around,
To learn why life to me was lent:
I will attend the faintest sound,
And then declare to man what God hath meant.


DELAY

No generous action can delay
Or thwart our higher, steadier aims;
But if sincere and true are they,
It will arouse our sight, and nerve our frames.


PRAYER

Great God! I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself;
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye;

And next in value, which thy kindness lends,
That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe'er they think or hope it that may be,
They may not dream how thou 'st distinguished me;

That my weak hand may equal my firm faith,
And my life practice more than my tongue saith;
That my low conduct may not show,
Nor my relenting lines,
That I thy purpose did not know,
Or overrated thy designs.


FOOTNOTES:

[8] [Eighteen lines of this poem appear in _Week_, pp. 181, 182, 351,
372. ]

[9] ["Suggested by the print of Guido's 'Aurora' sent by Mrs. Carlyle
as a wedding gift to Mrs. Emerson. " (Note in _Poems of Nature_. )]

[10] [Five stanzas of this poem appear in _Week_, pp. 46, 47. ]

[11] [The last four lines appear in _Week_, p. 54. ]

[12] ["The first four of these stanzas (unnamed by Thoreau) were
published in the Boston _Commonwealth_ in 1863, under the title of
'The Soul's Season,' the remainder as 'The Fall of the Leaf. ' There
can be little doubt that they are parts of one complete poem.