The Mountain and the Squirrel

The Mountain and the Squirrel Had a quarrel; And the former called the latter “Little Prig!”
Bun replied, “You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together.
To make up a year
And a sphere,
The green earth and the blue,
We all draw from our own stock,
And we need not go to the brock
To find out how big we are—not new.
But locusts are troublesome things With all their buzzing and jangling wings.

Nature is a feast; The Northern and Southern seas Haven’t within them the golden leaves, But the ghosts that gather everywhere
Are of no account.

There’s something shocking in the rhyme
And the sane old world. What mighty things on every side!
From the mountains to the sea
All ought to be included
In the universal birthday of the year.
But I am limited, And only in the spring
Can I believe I ever ordered anything. To make a mere hash of things
Is all that I can do.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson