The Sphinx (1841)
by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
The Sphinx is drowsy,
⠀⠀⠀The wings are furled;
Her ear is heavy,
⠀⠀⠀She broods on the world.
“Who’ll tell me my secret,
⠀⠀⠀The ages have kept? —
I awaited the seer,
⠀⠀⠀While they slumbered and slept; —
“The fate of the man-child;
⠀⠀⠀The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
⠀⠀⠀Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
⠀⠀⠀Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
⠀⠀⠀Deep underneath deep?
“Erect as a sunbeam,
⠀⠀⠀Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
⠀⠀⠀Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
⠀⠀⠀The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,
⠀⠀⠀Your silence he sings.
“The waves, unashamed,
⠀⠀⠀In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
⠀⠀⠀Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
⠀⠀⠀Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
⠀⠀⠀By their animate poles.
“Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
⠀⠀⠀Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
⠀⠀⠀One deity stirred, —
Each the other adorning,
⠀⠀⠀Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
⠀⠀⠀The vapor the hill.
“The babe by its mother
⠀⠀⠀Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted, —
⠀⠀⠀The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
⠀⠀⠀Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
⠀⠀⠀In soft miniature lies.
“But man crouches and blushes,
⠀⠀⠀Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
⠀⠀⠀He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
⠀⠀⠀Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
⠀⠀⠀He poisons the ground.
“Outspoke the great mother,
⠀⠀⠀Beholding his fear; —
At the sound of her accents
⠀⠀⠀Cold shuddered the sphere: —
‘Who has drugged my boy’s cup?
⠀⠀⠀Who has mixed my boy’s bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
⠀⠀⠀Has turned the man-child’s head?’”
I heard a poet answer,
⠀⠀⠀Aloud and cheerfully,
“Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
⠀⠀⠀Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
⠀⠀⠀These pictures of time;
They fad in the light of
⠀⠀⠀Their meaning sublime.
“The fiend that man harries
⠀⠀⠀Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
⠀⠀⠀Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of nature
⠀⠀⠀Can’t trace him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
⠀⠀⠀Which his eyes seek in vain.
“Profounder, profounder,
⠀⠀⠀Man’s spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
⠀⠀⠀No goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
⠀⠀⠀With sweetness untold,
Once found, — for new heavens
⠀⠀⠀He spurneth the old.
“Pride ruined the angels,
⠀⠀⠀Their shame them restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
⠀⠀⠀Lurks in stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
⠀⠀⠀Who is noble and free? —
I would he were nobler
⠀⠀⠀Than to love me.
“Eterne alternation
⠀⠀⠀Now follows, now flied;
And under pain, pleasure, —
⠀⠀⠀Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
⠀⠀⠀Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
⠀⠀⠀To the borders of day.
“Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits!
⠀⠀⠀Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx —
⠀⠀⠀Her muddy eyes to clear!” —
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, —
⠀⠀⠀Said, “Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
⠀⠀⠀Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
“Thou art the unanswered question;
⠀⠀⠀Couldst see they proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
⠀⠀⠀And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
⠀⠀⠀It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
⠀⠀⠀Time is the false reply.”
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
⠀⠀⠀And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
⠀⠀⠀She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
⠀⠀⠀She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave;
⠀⠀⠀She stood Monadnoc’s head.
Through a thousand voices
⠀⠀⠀Spoke the universal dame:
“Who telleth one of my meanings,
⠀⠀⠀Is master of all I am.”
❧ — arisbe.carrd.co — ❧
Bib. & see also:
- source: Wikisource, “The Sphinx” (Emerson, 1847), “Ralph Waldo Emerson”
- “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson The Major Poetry
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson The Major Prose
- Joseph Urbas, The Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- EmersonCentral.com
- University of Michigan, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Centenary Edition (digital edition)
- Harvard University Press, Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
⠀⠀⠀Is master of all I am.”
