PART ONE

 

ELTROVADO

 

 

To the open ear it sings

Sweet the genesis of things

Of tendency through endless ages,

Of star-dust, and star-pligrimages,

Of rounded worlds, of space and time,

Of the old flood's subsiding slime,

Of chemic matter, force and form,

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:

The rushing metamorphosis,

Dissolving all that fixture is,

Melts things that be to things that seem,

And solid nature to a dream.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Woodnotes II, 1837