Monadnock looms against the pale blue dome
Of sky, a monarch crowned with cloud and sun;
Massive the moods of this rock-ribbed one
In ways of God that seemeth most at home;
An archetypal art those contours made,
An elemental brush the colors laid.

Type of New England, creature of her womb,
Rugged yet beautiful, thy fearless front
Preaches old freedom, and her sturdy wont
And purity and faith and living-room;
Fore-elder, thou, of simpler, saner days
When God meant prayer and Fatherland meant praise.

So Emerson, whose laud was made to thee
In words of bardic wonder, was a peak
Sprung from the same dear soil, and fain to speak
Faced skyward toward the heavens' clarity;
The same New England gave him goodly birth,
The same large mood, the same untired earth.

Anak of hills that take the questing eye,
Great dominant thing in all this landscape wide,
'Twas meet that thou shouldst thus be magnified
By him, that strength to strength should make reply:
Monadnock, moveless, whatsoe'er the wind,
Like Emerson midst shifts of humankind.