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Home > Authors Index > Browse all available works of Ralph Waldo Emerson > Text of Past

A poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Past

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Title:     The Past
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson [More Titles by Emerson]

The debt is paid,
The verdict said,
The Furies laid,
The plague is stayed.
All fortunes made;
Turn the key and bolt the door,
Sweet is death forevermore.
Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,
Nor murdering hate, can enter in.
All is now secure and fast;
Not the gods can shake the Past;
Flies-to the adamantine door
Bolted down forevermore.
None can reenter there,--
No thief so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal Fact.


[The end]
Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem: Past

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