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 problem.

• • I like a church; I like a cowl;
  • I love a prophet of the soul;
  • And on my heart monastic aisles
  • Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
  • Yet not for all his faith can see
  • Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
• • Why should the vest on him allure,
  • Which I could not on me endure?
  • Not from a vain or shallow thought
  • His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
  • Never from lips of cunning fell
  • The thrilling Delphic oracle;
  • Out from the heart of nature rolled
  • The burdens of the Bible old;
  • The litanies of nations came,
  • Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
  • Up from the burning core below,—
  • The canticles of love and woe:
  • The hand that rounded Peter's dome
  • And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
  • Wrought in a sad sincerity;
  • Himself from God he could not free;
  • He builded better than he knew;—
  • The conscious stone to beauty grew.
• • Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
  • Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
  • Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
  • Painting with morn each annual cell?
  • Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
  • To her old leaves new myriads?
  • Such and so grew these holy piles,
  • Whilst love and terror laid the tales.
  • Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
  • As the best gem upon her zone,
  • And Morning opes with haste her lids
  • To gaze upon the Pyramids;
  • O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
  • As on its friends, with kindred eye;
  • For out of Thought's interior sphere
  • These wonders rose to upper air;
  • And Nature gladly gave them place,
  • Adopted them into her race,
  • And granted them an equal date
  • With Andes and with Ararat.
• • These temples grew as grows the grass;
  • Art might obey, but not surpass.
  • The passive Master lent his hand
  • To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
  • And the same power that reared the shrine
  • Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
  • Ever the fiery Pentecost
  • Girds with one flame the countless host,
  • Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
  • And through the priest the mind inspires.
  • The word unto the prophet spoken
  • Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
  • The word by seers or sibyls told,
  • In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
  • Still floats upon the morning wind,
  • Still whispers to the willing mind.
  • One accent of the Holy Ghost
  • The heedless world hath never lost.
  • I know what say the fathers wise,—
  • The Book itself before me lies,
  • Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
  • And he who blent both in his line,
  • The younger Golden Lips or mines,
  • Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.
  • His words are music in my ear,
  • I see his cowlèd portrait dear;
  • And yet, for all his faith could see,
  • I would not the good bishop be.