175 Fourscore or a hundred words But they turn them in a fashion Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion. 180 And the learned lecture, well; Spare the clergy and libraries, Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot. 185 Rude poets of the tavern hearth, 190 Goes like bullet to its mark; While the solid curse and jeer Never baulk the waiting ear. On the summit as I stood, O'er the floor of plain and flood 195 Seemed to me, the towering hill Was not altogether still, But a quiet sense conveyed; If I err not, thus it said: 175. "The vocabulary of a rich and long-cultivated language like the English may be roughly estimated at about one hundred thousand words (although this excludes a great deal which, if 'English' were understood in its widest sense, would have to be counted in); but thirty thousand a very large estimate for the number ever used, in writing or speaking, by a well-educated man; three to five thousand, it has been carefully estimated, cover the ordinary need of cultivated intercourse; and the number acquired by persons of lowest training and narrowest information is considerably less than this." The Life and Growth of Language, by W. D. Whitney, p. 26. "Many feet in summer seek, 200 Oft, my far-appearing peak; In the dreaded winter time, None save dappling shadows climb, Old as the sun, old almost as the shade. 205 And comest thou To see strange forest and new snow, And leavest thou thy lowland race, 210 And wouldst be my companion, 215 At the burning Lyre, With its stars of northern fire, "Ah! welcome, if thou bring 220 My secret in thy brain; To mountain-top may Muse's wing 225 And how the hills began, The frank blessings of the hill "Let him heed who can and will; 230 To stand the hurts of time, until "If thou trowest How the chemic eddies play, Pole to pole, and what they say; 235 And that these gray crags Not on crags are hung, But beads are of a rosary On prayer and music strung; And, credulous, through the granite seeming, 240 Seest the smile of Reason beaming;— Can thy style-discerning eye The hidden-working Builder spy, Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din, 245 Knowest thou this? O pilgrim, wandering not amiss! "For the world was built in order, 250 And the atoms march in tune; Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, 260 "Monadnoc is a mountain strong, 263. Meru is a fabulous mountain in the centre of the world, eighty thousand leagues high, the abode of Vishnu, and a per For it is on zodiacs writ, 265 Adamant is soft to wit: And when the greater comes again I shall pass, as glides my shadow 270 "Through all time, in light, in gloom, Well I hear the approaching feet On the flinty pathway beat Of him that cometh, and shall come; 280 And the long Alleghanies here, And all town-sprinkled lands that be, "Every morn I lift my head, See New England underspread, 285 South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound From Katskill east to the sea-bound. Anchored fast for many an age, I await the bard and sage, Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, 290 Shall string Monadnoc like a bead. fect paradise. It may be termed the Hindû Olympus. These lines are in the spirit of the German philosopher Hegel's dictum, that one thought of man outweighed all nature. 276. In this bold figure the earth, with its mountains and town-sprinkled lands, is made the image of the lofty mind which dwells among the higher thoughts, and carries the mountain ir its hands as a very little thing. Comes that cheerful troubadour, This mound shall throb his face before, It rose a bubble from the plain. Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart, 305 Slowsure Britain's secular might, I will give my son to eat 310 So the coinage of his brain Shall not be forms of stars, but stars, 15. The scarf is the vesture of the mountain, and the light of the morning, revealing it, may be said to wind it about the nountain; or it may be the wreathing vapor. 321. I show the little clerk with his bead-eyes my granite chaos and the glittering quartz which is my midsummer snow. |