Explore "Compensation" by Ralph Waldo Emerson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The wings of Time are black and white, / Pied with morning and with night. / Mountain tall and ocean deep / Trembling balance duly keep. / In changing moon, in tidal wave, / Glows the feud of Want and Have. / Gauge of more and less through space / Electric star and pencil plays. / The lonely Earth amid the balls / That hurry through the eternal halls, / A makeweight flying to the void, / Supplemental asteroid, / Or compensatory spark, / Shoots across the neutral Dark.
Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine, / Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: / Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, / None from its stock that vine can reave. / Fear not, then, thou child infirm, / There's no god dare wrong a worm. / Laurel crowns cleave to deserts / And power to him who power exerts; / Hast not thy share? On winged feet, / Lo! it rushes thee to meet; / And all that Nature made thy own, / Floating in air or pent in stone, / Will rive the hills and swim the sea / And, like thy shadow, follow thee.