I cannot spare water or wine, <br />Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; <br />From the earth-poles to the Line, <br />All between that works or grows, <br />Every thing is kin of mine. <br /> <br />Give me agates for my meat, <br />Give me cantharids to eat, <br />From air and ocean bring me foods, <br />From all zones and altitudes. <br /> <br />From all natures, sharp and slimy, <br />Salt and basalt, wild and tame, <br />Tree, and lichen, ape, sea-lion, <br />Bird and reptile be my game. <br /> <br />Ivy for my fillet band, <br />Blinding dogwood in my hand, <br />Hemlock for my sherbet cull me, <br />And the prussic juice to lull me, <br />Swing me in the upas boughs, <br />Vampire-fanned, when I carouse. <br /> <br />Too long shut in strait and few, <br />Thinly dieted on dew, <br />I will use the world, and sift it, <br />To a thousand humors shift it, <br />As you spin a cherry. <br />O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry, <br />O all you virtues, methods, mights; <br />Means, appliances, delights; <br />Reputed wrongs, and braggart rights; <br />Smug routine, and things allowed; <br />Minorities, things under cloud! <br />Hither! take me, use me, fill me, <br />Vein and artery, though ye kill me; <br />God! I will not be an owl, <br />But sun me in the Capitol.<br /><br />Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mithridates/
