Himself it was who wrote <br />His rank, and quartered his own coat. <br />There is no king nor sovereign state <br />That can fix a hero's rate; <br />Each to all is venerable, <br />Cap-a-pie invulnerable, <br />Until he write, where all eyes rest, <br />Slave or master on his breast. <br /> <br />I saw men go up and down <br />In the country and the town, <br />With this prayer upon their neck, <br />"Judgment and a judge we seek." <br />Not to monarchs they repair, <br />Nor to learned jurist's chair, <br />But they hurry to their peers, <br />To their kinsfolk and their dears, <br />Louder than with speech they pray, <br />What am I? companion; say. <br />And the friend not hesitates <br />To assign just place and mates, <br />Answers not in word or letter, <br />Yet is understood the better;— <br />Is to his friend a looking-glass, <br />Reflects his figure that doth pass. <br />Every wayfarer he meets <br />What himself declared, repeats; <br />What himself confessed, records; <br />Sentences him in his words, <br />The form is his own corporal form, <br />And his thought the penal worm. <br /> <br />Yet shine for ever virgin minds, <br />Loved by stars and purest winds, <br />Which, o'er passion throned sedate, <br />Have not hazarded their state, <br />Disconcert the searching spy, <br />Rendering to a curious eye <br />The durance of a granite ledge <br />To those who gaze from the sea's edge. <br />It is there for benefit, <br />It is there for purging light, <br />There for purifying storms, <br />And its depths reflect all forms; <br />It cannot parley with the mean, <br />Pure by impure is not seen. <br />For there's no sequestered grot, <br />Lone mountain tam, or isle forgot, <br />But justice journeying in the sphere <br />Daily stoops to harbor there.<br /><br />Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/astr-aelig/
