Poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Apology

THINK me not unkind and rude
    That I walk alone in grove and glen; 
I go to the god of the wood
    To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
    Fold my arms beside the brook; 
Each cloud that floated in the sky
    Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
    For the idle flowers I brought; 
Every aster in my hand
    Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery
    But 'tis figured in the flowers; 
Was never secret history
    But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
    Homeward brought the oxen strong; 
A second crop thine acres yield,
    Which I gather in a song. 

1. To Ellen at the South
2. Hamatreya
3. Woodnotes I
4. The Rhodora
5. Guy

Lewis Morris The Apology ("I MAY not scorn, I cannot prize")

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