It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again.Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new strange disguise.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?
The hardy bunting does not chide;
The blackbirds make the maples ring
With social cheer and jubilee;
The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee,
The robins know the melting snow;
The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,
Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves,
—And thou, by science all undone,
Why only must thy reason fail
To see the southing of the sun?
The world rolls round,—mistrust it not,—
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird’s note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end
of his life, found the names
of familiar objects escaping him.
He wanted to say something about a window,
or a table, or a book on a table.
But the word wasn't there,although other words could still suggestthe shape of what he meant.Then someone, his wife perhaps,would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry,is there a draft?" He'd nod.She'd rise. Once a friend dropped byto visit, shook out his umbrellain the hall, remarked upon the rain.Later the word umbrellavanished and becamethe thing that strangers take away.Paper, pen, table, book:was it possible for a man to thinkwithout them? To knowthat he was thinking? We rememberthat we forget, he'd written once,before he started to forget.Three times he was toldthat Longfellow had died.Without the past, the presentlay around him like the sea.Or like a ship, becalmed,upon the sea. He smiledto think he was the captain then,gazing off into whiteness,waiting for the wind to rise.–Lawrence Raab
