You’d think that I’d have known Emerson’s “Monadnoc,” since I live near one. But I came to the poem through Robert Frost’s essay.
Like Frost, I like these lines:
Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,
These the masters who can teach,
Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords,
These they turn in other fashion
Than the writer or the parson.
I can spare the college-bell,
And the learned lecture well.
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For the hardy English root
Thrives here unvalued underfoot.
I learned what I know of our ancient speech by listening to my grandfather and other Old Timers in Texas. The lexicon was limited by education but also by choice. The storytellers despised fancy words and used plain ones in inventive ways.
Frost said he used to climb aboard a wagonload of shooks just for the pleasure of hearing the driver’s usage.
• Sources: Frost’s essay “Emerson” is in The Collected Prose of Robert Frost, edited by Mark Richardson; Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard, 2007.
I found Emerson’s “Monadnoc” here:
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