The Nun's Aspiration
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 to 1882
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The yesterday doth never smile,
The day goes drudging the while,
Yet, in the name of Godhead, I
morrow front, and can defy;
Though I am weak, God, when prayed,
Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,
If He should make web a blot
On life's fair picture of delight,
heart's content would find it right.
But O, these and leaves,-
When happy stoic Nature grieves,
No speech so beautiful
As their murmurs mine to lull.
this altar God hath built
I lay my vanity guilt;
Nor me can Hope or Passion urge
Hearing now the lofty dirge
Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,
Nature's funeral high and dim,-
Sable pageantry of clouds,
Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
Many a day shall and die,
Many an angel wander by,
And passing, my sunken turf
Moist perhaps by ocean surf,
Forgotten splendid tombs,
Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms.
earth I dream;-I die to be:
Time, shake thy bald head at me.
I challenge thee to past
Or for my turn to fly too fast.
me not numbed or halt with age,
Or cares earth to earth engage,
Caught with love's cord of beams,
Or mired by climate's gross extremes.
I tire shams, I rush to be:
I pass with yonder free,-
Pass with the comet into space
Which thy aeons to embrace;
Aeons which tardily unfold
Realm realm,-extent untold;
No early morn, no evening late,-
Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate,
Whose shining sons, too great fame,
Never heard thy weary name;
Nor lives the bard to say
How drear the part I held one,
How lame the other limped away.