THE
PROBLEM (1840, 1847)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I like a
church; I like a cowl;
I love a
prophet of the soul;
And on my
heart monastic aisles
Fall like
sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
Yet not for
all his faith can see
Would I that
cowled churchmen be.
Why should that vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from vain
or shallow thought
His awful
Jove young Phidias brought,
Never from
the lips of cunning fell
The thrilling
Delphic oracle;
Out from the
heart of nature rolled
The burdens
of the Bible old;
The litanies
of nations came,
Like the
volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the
burning core below, -
The canticles
of love and woe;
The hand that
rounded Peter's dome
And groined
the aisles of Christian Rome
Wrought in a
sad sincerity;
Himself from
God he could not free;
He builded
better than he knew; -
The conscious
stone to beauty grew.
Know'st
thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of
leaves and feathers from her breast?
Or
how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting
with morn each annual cell?
Or
how the sacred pine-tree adds
To
her old leaves new myriads?
Such
and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst
love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth
proudly wears the Parthenon,
As
the best gem upon her zone;
And
Morning opes with her haste her lids,
To
gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er
England's abbeys bends the sky,
As
on its friends, with kindred eye;
For
out of Thought's interior sphere,
These
wonders rose to upper air;
And
Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted
them into her race,
And
granted them an equal date
With
Andes and with Ararat.
These temples
grew as grows the grass;
Art might
obey, but not surpass.
The passive
Master lent his hand
To the vast
soul that o'er him planned;
And the same
power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the
tribes that knelt within.
Ever the
fiery Pentecost
Girds with
one flame the countless host,
Trances the
heart through chanting choirs,
And through
the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto
the prophet spoken
Was writ on
tables yet unbroken;
The word by
seers or sibyls told,
In groves of
oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats
upon the morning wind,
Still
whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of
the Holy Ghost
The heedless
world hath never lost.
I know what
say the fathers wise, -
The Book
itself before me lies,
Old Crysostom,
best Augustine,
And he who
blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the
Shakespeare of divines.
His words are
music in my ear,
I see his
cowled portrait dear;
And yet, for
all his faith could see.
I would not
the good bishop be.