The Poetry Corner

Sunrise

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Would you know what joy is hid In our green Musketaquid, And for travelled eyes what charms Draw us to these meadow farms, Come and I will show you all Makes each day a festival. Stand upon this pasture hill, Face the eastern star until The slow eye of heaven shall show The world above, the world below. Behold the miracle! Thou saw'st but now the twilight sad And stood beneath the firmament, A watchman in a dark gray tent, Waiting till God create the earth,-- Behold the new majestic birth! The mottled clouds, like scraps of wool, Steeped in the light are beautiful. What majestic stillness broods Over these colored solitudes. Sleeps the vast East in pleasd peace, Up the far mountain walls the streams increase Inundating the heaven With spouting streams and waves of light Which round the floating isles unite:-- See the world below Baptized with the pure element, A clear and glorious firmament Touched with life by every beam. I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour:-- This is not the ancient earth Whereof old chronicles relate The tragic tales of crime and fate; But rather, like its beads of dew And dew-bent violets, fresh and new, An exhalation of the time.