Poems (Emerson, Household Edition, 1904)/I bear in youth the sad infirmities

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I bear in youth the sad infirmities
That use to undo the limb and sense of age;
It hath pleased Heaven to break the dream of bliss
Which lit my onward way with bright presage,
And my unserviceable limbs forego.
The sweet delight I found in fields and farms,
On windy hills, whose tops with morning glow,
And lakes, smooth mirrors of Aurora's charms.
Yet I think on them in the silent night,
Still breaks that morn, though dim, to Memory's eye,
And the firm soul does the pale train defy
Of grim Disease, that would her peace affright.
Please God, I 'll wrap me in mine innocence,
And bid each awful Muse drive the damned harpies hence.

⁠Cambridge, 1827.