Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AT SEA, SEPTEMBER 1833, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON


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AT SEA, SEPTEMBER 1833, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Oft as I paced the deck
Last Line: Has the star-bearing squadron left leghorn?'
Subject(s): Sea Voyages


Oft as I paced the deck,
My thought recurred on the uncertain sea
To what is faster than the solid land.
My Country! can the heart clasp realm so vast
As the broad oceans that wash thee inclose?
Is not the charity ambitious
That meets its arms about a continent?
And yet the sages praise the preference
Of my own cabin to a baron's hall.
Chide it not then, but count it honesty
The insidious love & hate that curl the lip
Of the frank Yankee in the tenements
Of ducal & of royal rank abroad;
His supercilious ignorance
Of lordship, heraldry, & ceremony;
Nor less, his too tenacious memory,
Amid the particolored treasuries
That deck the Louvre & the Pitti House,
Of the brave steamboats puffing by New York,
Boston's half-island, & the Hadley Farms
Washed by Connecticut's psalm-loving stream.
Yea, if the ruddy Englishman speak true,
In Rome's basilica, and underneath
The frescoed sky of its audacious dome,
Dauntless Kentucky chews, & counts the cost,
And builds the shrine with dollars in his head.
Arrived in Italy, his first demand, --
'Has the star-bearing squadron left Leghorn?'





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