loftiest patriotism never found more ardent and eloquent expression than
in the hymn sung at the completion of the Concord monument, on the 19th of
April, 1836. There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph; "the foe long
since in silence slept"; but throughout there resounds a note of pure and
deep rejoicing at the victory of justice over oppression, which Concord
fight so aptly symbolized. In "Hamatreya" and "The Earth Song," another
chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we too, he asks, we Yankee
farmers, descendants of the men who gave up all for freedom, go back to
the creed outworn of medieval feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of the
land that yields us its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my
name's"? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish boastfulness, and asks "How
am I theirs if they cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I heard 'The
Earth Song,' I was no longer brave; my avarice cooled, like lust in the
child of the grave" Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the insight and the power
with which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are
interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage
still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We
fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one
sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and
leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchman
tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good for
which we all our lifetime grope; and though the substance us elude, we in
thee the shadow find." ... "Thou dost supply the shortness of our days,
and promise, on thy Founder's truth, long morrow to this mortal youth!" I
have ignored the versified form in these extracts, in order to bring them
into more direct contrast with the writer's prose, and show that the
poetry is inherent. No other poet, with whom I am acquainted, has caused
the very spirit of a land, the mother of men, to express itself so
adequately as Emerson has done in these pieces. Whitman falls short of
them, it seems to me, though his effort is greater.