The landscape is an armory of powers,
Which, one by one, they know to draw and use. 
They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work;
They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,
And, like the chemist ’mid his loaded jars,
Draw from each stratum its adapted use
To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal. 
They turn the frost upon their chemic heap,
They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain,
They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime,
And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow,
Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods
O’er meadows bottomless.  So, year by year,
They fight the elements with elements
(That one would say, meadow and forest walked,
Transmuted in these men to rule their like),
And by the order in the field disclose
The order regnant in the yeoman’s brain.

What these strong masters wrote at large in miles,
I followed in small copy in my acre;
For there’s no rood has not a star above it;
The cordial quality of pear or plum
Ascends as gladly in a single tree
As in broad orchards resonant with bees;
And every atom poises for itself,
And for the whole.  The gentle deities
Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds,
The innumerable tenements of beauty. 
The miracle of generative force,
Far-reaching concords of astronomy
Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds;
Better, the linked purpose of the whole,
And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty
In the glad home plain-dealing Nature gave. 
The polite found me impolite; the great
Would mortify me, but in vain; for still
I am a willow of the wilderness,
Loving the wind that bent me.  All my hurts
My garden spade can heal.  A woodland walk,
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds. 
For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear: 
’Dost love our manners?  Canst thou silent lie? 
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like Nature pass
Into the winter night’s extinguished mood? 
Canst thou shine now, then darkle,
And being latent, feel thyself no less? 
As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,
The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure,
Yet envies none, none are unenviable.’

DIRGE

CONCORD, 1838

I reached the middle of the mount
  Up which the incarnate soul must climb,
And paused for them, and looked around,
  With me who walked through space and time.

Five rosy boys with morning light
  Had leaped from one fair mother’s arms,
Fronted the sun with hope as bright,
  And greeted God with childhood’s psalms.

Knows he who tills this lonely field
  To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
  At midnight and at morn?

In the long sunny afternoon
  The plain was full of ghosts;
I wandered up, I wandered down,
  Beset by pensive hosts.