The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Biographical Sketch.
• I.: Poems.
• The Sphinx.
• Each and All.
• The Problem.
• To Rhea.
• The Visit.
• Uriel.
• The World-soul.
• Alphonso of Castile.
• Mithridates.
• To J. W.
• Destiny.
• Guy.
• Hamatreya.
• Earth-song.
• Good-bye.
• The Rhodora: On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?
• The Humble-bee.
• Berrying.
• The Snow-storm.
• Woodnotes.
• Woodnotes.
• Monadnoc.
• Fable.
• Ode. Inscribed to W. H. Channing.
• Astræ
• étienne De La Boéce.
• Compensation.
• Forbearance.
• The Park.
• Forerunners.
• Sursum Corda.
• Ode to Beauty.
• Give All to Love.
• To Ellen At the South.
• To Eva.
• The Amulet.
• Thine Eyes Still Shined.
• Eros.
• Hermione.
• Initial, Dæmonic, and Celestial Love
• The Apology.
• Merlin.
• Merlin.
• Bacchus.
• Merops.
• Saadi.
• Holidays.
• Xenophanes.
• The Day's Ration.
• Blight.
• Musketaquid.
• Dirge. Concord, 1838.
• Threnody.
• Concord Hymn: Sung At the Completion of the Battle Monument, April 19, 1836.
• II.: May-day and Other Pieces.
• May-day.
• The Adirondacs. a Journal.
• Occasional and Misc. Pieces: Brahma.
• Fate.
• Freedom.
• Ode. Sung In the Town Hall, Concord, July 4, 1857.
• Boston Hymn. Read In Music Hall, January 1, 1863.
• Voluntaries
• Boston. Sicut Patribus, Sit Deus Nobib. [read In Faneuil Hall, On December 16, 1873, the Centennial Anniverary At the Destruction of the Tea In Roston Harbor.]
• Letters.
• Rubies.
• The Test. (musa Loquitur.)
• Solution.
• Hymn Sung At the Second Church, Boston, At the Ordination of Rev. Chandler Robbins.
• Nature and Life: Nature.
• Nature.
• The Romany Girl.
• Days.
• The Chartist's Complaint.
• My Garden.
• The Titmouse.
• The Harp.
• Sea-shore.
• Song of Nature.
• Two Rivers.
• Waldeinsamkeit.
• Terminus.
• The Nun's Aspiration.
• April.
• Maiden Speech of the æolian Harp.
• Cupido.
• The Past.
• The Last Farewell. Lines Written By the Author's Brother, Edward Bliss Emerson, Whilst Sailing Out of Boston Harbor, Bound For the Island of Porto Rico, In 1832.
• In Memoriam. Edward Bliss Emerson.
• Elements: Experience.
• Compensation.
• Politics.
• Heroism.
• Character. 1
• Culture.
• Friendship.
• Beauty.
• Manners.
• Art.
• Spiritual Laws.
• Unity.
• Worship.
• Quatrains.
• Translations.
• III.: Appendix.
• The Poet. 1
• Fragments On the Poet and the Poetic Gift. 1
• Fragments On Nature and Life.
• The Bohemian Hymn.
• Prayer.
• Grace.
• Eros.
• Written In Naples, March 1833.
• Written At Rome, 1833.
• Peter's Field. 1
• The Walk.
• May Morning.
• The Miracle.
• The Waterfall.
• Walden. 1
• Pan.
• Monadnoc From Afar.
• The South Wind.
• Fame.
• Webster. From the Phi Beta Kappa Poem, 1834.
• Written In a Volume of Goethe.
• The Enchanter.
• Philosopher.
• Limits.
• Inscription For a Well In Memory of the Martyrs of the War.
• The Exile. (after Taliessin.)

the sphinx.

• • The Sphinx is drowsy,
  • Her wings are furled:
  • Her ear is heavy,
  • She broods on the world.
  • “Who'll tell me my secret,
  • The ages have kept?—
  • I awaited the seer
  • While they slumbered and slept:—
• • “The fate of the man-child,
  • The meaning of man;
  • Known fruit of the unknown;
  • Dædalian plan;
  • Out of sleeping a waking,
  • Out of waking a sleep;
  • Life death overtaking;
  • Deep underneath deep?
• • “Erect as a sunbeam
  • Upspringeth the palm;
  • The elephant browses
  • Undaunted and calm;
• • In beautiful motion
  • The thrush plies his wings;
  • Kind leaves of his covert,
  • Your silence he sings.
• • “The waves, unashamed,
  • In difference sweet,
  • Play glad with the breezes,
  • Old playfellows meet;
  • The journeying atoms,
  • Primordial wholes,
  • Firmly draw, firmly drive,
  • By their animate poles.
• • “sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
  • Plant, quadruped, bird,
  • By one music enchanted,
  • One deity stirred,—
  • Each the other adorning,
  • Accompany still;
  • Night veileth the morning,
  • The vapor the hill.
• • “The babe by its mother
  • Lies bathed in joy;
  • Glide its hours uncounted,—
  • The sun is its toy;
  • Shines the peace of all being,
  • Without cloud, in its eyes;
  • And the sum of the world
  • In soft miniature lies.
• • “But man crouches and blushes,
  • Absconds and conceals
  • He creepeth and peepeth,
  • He palters and steals;
  • Intirm, melaneholy,
  • Jealous glancing around,
  • An oaf, an accomplice,
  • He poisons the ground.
• • “Out spoke the great mother,
  • Beholding his tear;—
  • At the sound of her accents
  • Cold shuddered the sphere:—
  • ‘Who has drugged my boy's cup?
  • Who has mixed my boy's bread?
  • Who, with sadness and madness,
  • Has turned my child's head?’”
• • I heard a poet answer
  • Aloud and cheerfully,
  • “Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
  • Are pleasant songs to me.
  • Deep love lieth under
  • These pictures of time;
  • They fade in the light of
  • Their meaning sublime.
• • “The fiend that man harries
  • Is love of the Best;
  • Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
  • Lit by rays from the Blest.
  • The Lethe of Nature
  • Can't trance him again,
  • Whose soul sees the perfect,
  • Which his eyes seek in vain,
• • “To vision prof bunder
  • Man's spirit must dive;
  • His aye-rolling orb
  • At no goal will arrive;
  • The heavens that now draw him
  • With sweetness untold,
  • Once found,—for new heavens
  • He spurneth the old.
• • “Pride ruined the angels,
  • Their shame them restores;
  • Lurks the joy that is sweetest
  • In stings of remorse.
  • Have I a lover
  • Who is noble and free?—
  • I would he were nobler
  • Than to love me.
• • “Eterne alternation
  • Now follows, now flies;
  • And under pain, pleasure,—
  • Under pleasure, pain lies.
  • Love works at the centre,
  • Heart-heaving alway;
  • Forth speed the strong pulses
  • To the borders of day.
• • “Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;
  • Thy sight is growing blear;
  • Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx,
  • Her muddy eyes to clear!”
  • The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,—
  • Said, “Who taught thee me to name?
  • I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
  • Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
• • “Thou art the unanswered question;
  • Couldst see thy proper eye,
  • Alway it asketh, asketh;
  • And each answer is a lie.
  • So take thy quest through nature,
  • It through thousand natures ply;
  • Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
  • Time is the false reply.”
• • Uprose the merry Sphinx,
  • And crouched no more in stone;
  • She melted into purple cloud,
  • She silvered in the moon;
  • She spired into a yellow flame;
  • She flowered in blossoms red;
  • She flowed into a foaming wave;
  • She stood Monadnoc's head.
• • Thorough a thousand voices
  • Spoke the universal dame;
  • “Who telleth one of my meanings,
  • Is master of all I am.”