George Willis Cooke, comp. The Poets of Transcendentalism: An Anthology. 1903.
ExcellenceAmos Bronson Alcott (17991888)
W
The chiefest? Doth any such befall
Within man’s reach? or is there such a good at all?
Nor change; than which there can be nothing higher:
Such good must be the utter point of man’s desire.
Can be desired for no other end
Than for itself, on which all other goods depend.
A real essence clouded in the mist
Of curious art, or clear to every eye that list?
An edge, and keep the practice soul in ure
Like that dear chymic dust, or puzzling quadrature?
This cath’lic pleasure, whose extremes may bind
My thoughts, and fill the gulf of my insatiate mind?
Doth gouty Mammon’s griping hand infold
This secret saint in secret shrines of sov’reign gold?
In keeping; makes us hers, in seeming ours;
She slides from Heaven indeed, but not in Danae’s showers.
Builds up a creature, and then batters down:
Kings raise thee with a smile and raze thee with a frown.
Acts the fool’s part on earth’s uncertain stage:
Begins the play in youth, and epilogues in age.
Torment the soul with pleasing it; and please,
Like waters gulp’d in fevers, with deceitful ease.
Mole-hills perform the mountains she professes,
Alas! can earth confer more good than earth possesses?
Earth’s vain delights, and make thy full career
At Heaven’s eternal joys: stop, stop, thy courser there.
There shalt thou swim in never-fading pleasure,
And blaze in honor far above the frowns of Cæsar.
On thee, the chiefest good, no need to call
For earth’s inferior trash; thou, thou art All in All.