175 Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords;

But they turn them in a fashion

Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion.
I can spare the college bell,

180 And the learned lecture, well;

Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For what hardy Saxon root

Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot.

185 Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground, and never soars,
While Jake retorts, and Reuben roars:
Scoff of yeoman strong and stark,

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,
Under clouds, my lonely head,

Old as the sun, old almost as the shade. 205 And comest thou

To see strange forest and new snow,
And tread uplifted land?

And leavest thou thy lowland race,
Here amid clouds to stand?

210 And wouldst be my companion,
Where I gaze, and still shall gaze,
Through hoarding nights and spending days,
When forests fall, and man is gone,
Over tribes and over times,

215 At the burning Lyre,
Nearing me,

With its stars of northern fire,
In many a thousand years?

"Ah! welcome, if thou bring

220 My secret in thy brain;

To mountain-top may Muse's wing
With good allowance strain.
Gentle pilgrim, if thou know
The gamut old of Pan,

225 And how the hills began,

The frank blessings of the hill
Fall on thee, as fall they will.

"Let him heed who can and will;
Enchantment fixed me here

230 To stand the hurts of time, until
In mightier chant I disappear.

"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,
With hammer soft as snowflake's flight;

245 Knowest thou this?

O pilgrim, wandering not amiss!
Already my rocks lie light,
And soon my cone will spin.

"For the world was built in order,

250 And the atoms march in tune;

Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,
The sun obeys them, and the moon.
Orb and atom forth they prance,
When they hear from far the rune,
255 None so backward in the troop,
When the music and the dance
Reach his place and circumstance,
But knows the sun-creating sound,
And, though a pyramid, will bound.

260 "Monadnoc is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among;
But well I know, no mountain can,
Zion or Meru, measure with man.

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
With my secret in his brain,

I shall pass, as glides my shadow
Daily over hill and meadow.

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;
Of him who shall as lightly bear
275 My daily load of woods and streams,
As doth this round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams;
Whose timbers, as they silent float,
Alps and Caucasus uprear,

280 And the long Alleghanies here,

And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all their history.

"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,
As when, with inward fires and pain,

It rose a bubble from the plain.
295 When he cometh, I shall shed,
From this wellspring in my head,
Fountain-drop of spicier worth
Than all vintage of the earth.
There's fruit upon my barren soil
300 Costlier far than wine or oil.
There's a berry blue and gold,
Autumn-ripe, its juices hold

Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancor, Athens' art,

305 Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight.

I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat,
Bread to eat, and juice to drain,

310 So the coinage of his brain

Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars.
He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
315 Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the Dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South Cove and City Wharf.
I take him up my rugged sides,
320 Half-repentant, scant of breath,
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,

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.