Good Reading: "The World-Soul" by Ralph Waldo Emerson (in English)

Thanks to the morning light,
⁠Thanks to the foaming sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
⁠To the green-haired forest free;
Thanks to each man of courage,
⁠To the maids of holy mind,
To the boy with his games undaunted
⁠Who never looks behind.

Cities of proud hotels,
⁠Houses of rich and great,
Vice nestles in your chambers,
⁠Beneath your roofs of slate.
It cannot conquer folly,—
⁠Time-and-space-conquering steam,—
And the light-outspeeding telegraph
⁠Bears nothing on its beam.

The politics are base;
⁠The letters do not cheer;
And 't is far in the deeps of history,
⁠The voice that speaketh clear.
Trade and the streets ensnare us,
⁠Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
⁠And we despoil the unborn.

Yet there in the parlor sits
⁠Some figure of noble guise,—
Our angel, in a stranger's form,
⁠Or woman's pleading eyes;
Or only a flashing sunbeam
⁠In at the window-pane;
Or Music pours on mortals
⁠Its beautiful disdain.

The inevitable morning
⁠Finds them who in cellars be;
And be sure the all-loving Nature
⁠Will smile in a factory.
Yon ridge of purple landscape,
⁠Yon sky between the walls,
Hold all the hidden wonders
⁠In scanty intervals.

Alas! the Sprite that haunts us
⁠Deceives our rash desire;
It whispers of the glorious gods,
⁠And leaves us in the mire.
We cannot learn the cipher
⁠That 's writ upon our cell;
Stars help us by a mystery
⁠Which we could never spell.

If but one hero knew it,
⁠The world would blush in flame;
The sage, till he hit the secret,
⁠Would hang his head for shame.
Our brothers have not read it,
⁠Not one has found the key;
And henceforth we are comforted,—
⁠We are but such as they.

Still, still the secret presses;
⁠The nearing clouds draw down;
The crimson morning flames into
⁠The fopperies of the town.
Within, without the idle earth,
⁠Stars weave eternal rings;
The sun himself shines heartily,
⁠And shares the joy he brings.

And what if Trade sow cities
⁠Like shells along the shore,
And thatch with towns the prairie broad,
⁠With railways ironed o'er?—
They are but sailing foam-bells
⁠Along Thought's causing stream,
And take their shape and sun-color
⁠From him that sends the dream.

For Destiny never swerves
⁠To yields to men the helm;
He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves,
⁠Throughout the solid realm.
The patient Dæmon sits,
⁠With roses and a shroud;
He has his way, and deals his gifts,—
⁠But ours is not allowed.

He is no churl nor trifler,
⁠And his viceroy is none,—
Love-without-weakness,—
⁠Of Genius sire and son.
And his will is not thwarted;
⁠The seeds of land and sea
Are the atoms of his body bright,
⁠And his behest obey.

He serveth the servant,
⁠The brave he loves amain;
He kills the cripple and the sick,
⁠And straight begins again;
For gods delight in gods,
⁠And thrust the weak aside;
To him who scorns their charities
⁠Their arms fly open wide.

When the old world is sterile
⁠And the ages are effete,
He will from wrecks and sediment
⁠The fairer world complete.
He forbids to despair;
⁠His cheeks mantle with mirth;
And the unimagined good of men
⁠Is yeaning at the birth.

Spring still makes spring in the mind
⁠When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
⁠And we are never old;
Over the winter glaciers
⁠I see the summer glow,
And through the wild-piled snow-drift
⁠The warm rosebuds below.