# Poems (Emerson, Household Edition, 1904)/The Sphinx

THE SPHINX
The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. "Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?— I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept:—
"The fate of the man-child, The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown; Dædalian plan; Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep; Life death overtaking; Deep underneath deep?
"Erect as a sunbeam, Upspringeth the palm; The elephant browses, Undaunted and calm; In beautiful motion The thrush plies his wings; ​Kind leaves of his covert, Your silence he sings.
"The waves, unashamèd, In difference sweet, Play glad with the breezes, Old playfellows meet; The journeying atoms, Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive, By their animate poles.
"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted, One deity stirred,— Each the other adorning, Accompany still; Night veileth the morning, The vapor the hill.
"The babe by its mother Lies bathèd in joy; Glide its hours uncounted,— The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies.
​"But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an accomplice, He poisons the ground.
"Out spoke the great mother, Beholding his fear;— At the sound of her accents Cold shuddered the sphere:— 'Who has drugged my boy's cup? Who has mixed my boy's bread? Who, with sadness and madness, Has turned my child's head?'"
I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully, 'Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under These pictures of time; They fade in the light of Their meaning sublime.
"The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; ​Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain.
"To vision profounder, Man's spirit must dive; His aye-rolling orb At no goal will arrive; The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found,—for new heavens He spurneth the old.
"Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores; Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse. Have I a lover Who is noble and free?— I would he were nobler Than to love me.
"Eterne alternation Now follows, now flies; And under pain, pleasure,— Under pleasure, pain lies. ​Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway; Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day.
"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits; Thy sight is growing blear; Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx, Her muddy eyes to clear!" The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,— Said, "Who taught thee me to name? I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow; Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
"Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh; And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity; Time is the false reply."
Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon; She spired into a yellow flame; She flowered in blossoms red; ​She flowed into a foaming wave: She stood Monadnoc's head.
Thorough a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame; "Who telleth one of my meanings Is master of all I am."