WOODNOTES 



When the pine tosses its cones 



To the song of its waterfall tones, 

 Who speeds to the woodland walks? 



To birds and trees who talks? 

 Caesar of his leafy Rome, 



Where the poet is at home. 

 He goes to the river-side 



Not hook nor line hath he; 

 He stands in the meadows wide, 



Nor gun nor scythe to see. 

 Sure some god his eye enchants : 



What he knows nobody wants. 

 In the wood .he travels glad, 



Without better fortune had, 

 Melancholy without bad. 



Knowledge this man prizes best 

 Seems fantastic to the rest : 



Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, 

 Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds, 



Boughs on which the wild bees settle, 

 Tints that spot the violet's petal, 



Why Nature loves the number five, 

 And why the star-form she repeats : 



Lover of all things alive, 

 Wonderer at all he meets, 



Wonderer- chiefly at himself, 

 Who can tell him what he is? 



Or how meet in human elf 

 Coming and past eternities ? 



Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



[19] 



