diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.'

The lines from _Wood Notes_ run as follows:

'Come learn with me the fatal song
Which knits the world in music strong,
Whereto every bosom dances,
Kindled with courageous fancies;
Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes
Of things with things, of times with times,
Primal chimes of sun and shade,
Of sound and echo, man and maid;
The land reflected in the flood;
Body with shadow still pursued.
For nature beats in perfect tune
And rounds with rhyme her every rune;
Whether she work in land or sea
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.
Not unrelated, unaffied,
But to each thought and thing allied,
Is perfect nature's every part,
Rooted in the mighty heart.'

What place Emerson is to occupy in American literature is for America to
determine. Some authoritative remarks on this subject are to be found in
Mr. Lowell's essay on 'Thoreau,' in _My Study Windows_; but here at home,
where we are sorely pressed for room, it is certain he must be content
with a small allotment, where, however, he may for ever sit beneath his
own vine and fig-tree, none daring to make him afraid. Emerson will
always be the favourite author of somebody; and to be always read by
somebody is better than to be read first by everybody and then by nobody.
Indeed, it is hard to fancy a pleasanter destiny than to join the company
of lesser authors. All their readers are sworn friends. They are spared
the harsh discords of ill-judged praise and feigned rapture. Once or
twice in a century some enthusiastic and expansive admirer insists upon
dragging them from their shy retreats, and trumpeting their fame in the
market-place, asserting, possibly with loud asseverations (after the
fashion of Mr. Swinburne), that they are precisely as much above Otway
and Collins and George Eliot as they are below Shakespeare and Hugo and
Emily Bronte. The great world looks on good-humouredly for a moment or
two, and then proceeds as before, and the disconcerted author is left
free to scuttle back to his corner, where he is all the happier, sharing
th