Good Heart, that ownest all! <br />I ask a modest boon and small: <br />Not of lands and towns the gift,-- <br />Too large a load for me to lift,-- <br />But for one proper creature, <br />Which geographic eye, <br />Sweeping the map of Western earth, <br />Or the Atlantic coast, from Maine <br />To Powhatan's domain, <br />Could not descry. <br />Is't much to ask in all thy huge creation, <br />So trivial a part,-- <br />A solitary heart? <br /> <br />Yet count me not of spirit mean, <br />Or mine a mean demand, <br />For 't is the concentration <br />And worth of all the land, <br />The sister of the sea, <br />The daughter of the strand, <br />Composed of air and light, <br />And of the swart earth-might. <br />So little to thy poet's prayer <br />Thy large bounty well can spare. <br />And yet I think, if she were gone, <br />The world were better left alone.<br /><br />Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lover-s-petition/
