Was our poet planted so fast in intellect, so firmly rooted in the mind, so dazzled with light, yet so cleft withal by duplicity of gifts, that, thus forced to traverse the mid-world of contrast and contrariety, he was ever glancing forth from his coverts at life as reflected through his dividing prism,—resident never long in the tracts he surveyed, yet their persistent Muse nevertheless? And so, housed in the Mind, and thence sallying forth in quest of his game, whether of persons or things, he was the Mercury, the merchantman of ideas to his century. Nor was he left alone in life and thinking. Beside him stood his townsman,[1] whose sylvan intelligence, fast rooted in sense and Nature, was yet armed with a sagacity, a subtlety and strength, that penetrated while divining the essences of the creatures and things he studied, and of which he seemed both Atlas and Head. Footnote 1: Thoreau. Forcible protestants against the materialism of their own, as of preceding times, these masterly Idealists substantiated beyond all question their right to the empires they swayed,—the rich estates of an original genius. [Illustration: EMERSON’S SUMMER HOUSE.] [Illustration: THE SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, CONCORD, MASS.] ION: A MONODY. By A. BRONSON ALCOTT. READ BEFORE THE CONCORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, JULY 22, 1882. I. Why, oh, ye willows, and ye pastures bare, Why will ye thus your bloom so late delay, Wrap in chill weeds the sere and sullen day, And cheerless greet me wandering in despair? Tell me, ah, tell me!—ye of old could tell,— Whither my vanished Ion now doth fare. Say, have ye seen him lately pass this way, Ye who his wonted haunts did know full well? Heard ye his voice forth from the thicket swell, Where midst the drooping ferns he loved to stray? Caught ye no glimpses of my truant there? Tell me, oh, tell me, whither he hath flown— Beloved Ion flown, and left ye sad and lone, Whilst I through wood and field his loss bemoan. II.