Ralph Waldo Emerson - The House lyrics

There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan; Slow and warily to choose Rafters of immortal pine, Or cedar incorruptible, Worthy her design, She threads dark Alpine forests Or valleys by the sea, In many lands, with painful steps, Ere she can find a tree. She ransacks mines and ledges And quarries every rock, To hew the famous adamant For each eternal block— She lays her beams in music, In music every one, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances round the sun— That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, But for the love of happy souls Outlive the newest stars.