Blight

Give me truths;For I am weary of the surfaces,And die of inanition. If I knewOnly the herbs and simples of the wood,Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woodsDraw untold juices from the common earth,Untold, unknown, and I could surely spellTheir fragrance, and their chemistry applyBy sweet affinities to human flesh,Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,--O, that were much, and I could be a partOf the round day, related to the sunAnd planted world, and full executorOf their imperfect functions.But these young scholars, who invade our hills,Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,And travelling often in the cut he makes,Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,And all their botany is Latin names.The old men studied magic in the flowers,And human fortunes in astronomy,And an omnipotence in chemistry,Preferring things to names, for these were men,Were unitarians of the united world,And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyesAre armed, but we are strangers to the stars,And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,And strangers to the plant and to the mine.The injured elements say, 'Not in us;'And night and day, ocean and continent,Fire, plant and mineral say, 'Not in us;'And haughtily return us stare for stare.For we invade them impiously for gain;We devastate them unreligiously,And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.Therefore they shove us from them, yield to usOnly what to our griping toil is due;But the sweet affluence of love and song,The rich results of the divine consentsOf man and earth, of world beloved and lover,The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thievesAnd pirates of the universe, shut outDaily to a more thin and outward rind,Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;And life, shorn of its venerable length,Even at its greatest space is a defeat,And dies in anger that it was a dupe;And, in its highest noon and wantonness,Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;Even in the hot pursuit of the best aimsAnd prizes of ambition, checks its hand,Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,Chilled with a miserly comparisonOf the toy's purchase with the length of life.