“RICHTER”
by Margaret Fuller

Poet of Nature! Gentlest of the Wise!
     Most airy of the fanciful, most keen
Of satirists, thy thoughts, like butterflies,
    Still near the sweet-scented flowers have been;
With Titian's colors thou canst sunset paint, 
     With Raphael's dignity, celestial love;
With Hogath's pencil, each deceit and feint
      Of meanness and hypocrisy reprove;
Canst to Devotion's highest flight sublime
     Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art,
     Dissolve in ourifying tears the heart,
Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime;
     The fond illusions of the youth and maid,
At which so many world-formed sages sneer,
     When by the altar-lighted torch displayed,
Our natural religion can appear.
All things in thee tend to one polar star,
 Magnetic all thy influences are.

________

Some murmur at the "want of system" in Richter's writings.

A LABYRINTH! a flowery wilderness!
    Some in thy "Slip-boxes" and "Honey-moons"
Complain of —want of order, I confess,
     But not of system, in its highest sense.
Who asks a guiding clue through this wide mind,
In love of Nature, such will surely find;
      In tropic climes, live like the tropic bird,
When'er a spice-fraught grove may tempt they stay,
     Nor be by cares of colder climes disturbed.—
No frost the Summer's bloom shall drive away.
Nature's wide temple, and the azure dome,
Have plan enough for the free spirit's home!

A Note on the Text:

• 1st published in The Dial (July 1840) p. 135.

• Source: The Dial (July 1840) p. 135.

• Report errors to the Curator of Collections

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