RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
398
renew
my
same form
work, and, I think, only once in the though I see that he who thinks he ;
does something for the last time ought not to do it at all. Yet my objection is not to the thing, but to the form
;
and the concatenation of errors called
Society, to which I
still consent until my plumes be grown, makes even a duty of this concession also. So I submit to sell tickets again. But the
form
is
am
to
What
neither here nor there.
substance of
my
new-name
shrift?
all
Adam
shall be the
in the garden, I
the beasts in the field and all
the gods in the sky ; I am to invite men drenched in Time to recover themselves and come out of
Time and fire,
taste their native
with what
and emotion. all
immortal
I
am
I
air.
skill I can, the artillery of
to indicate constantly,
unworthy, the ideal and holy
life,
the
am
to
sympathy life
though within
the forgotten Good, the unknown Cause in which we sprawl and sin. I am to try the magic of life,
sincerity, that
poets.
I
am
luxury permitted only to kings and to celebrate the spiritual powers, in
their infinite contrast to the mechanical powers
and
I am to the mechanical philosophy of this time. console the brave sufferers under evils whose end
they cannot see, by appeals to the great Optimism self-affirmed in all bosoms."
When
the lectures were over he felt that he had
come short of
his
mark.