🌾 Today’s Poem ~ The Past

The Past

Ralph Waldo 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 reënter 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.