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.)

woodnotes.

i.

• • 1.

  • When the pine tosses its cones
  • To the song of its waterfall tones,
  • Who speeds to the woodland walks?
  • To birds and trees who talks?
  • Cæsar of his leafy Rome,
  • There the poet is at home.
  • He goes to the river-side,—
  • Not hook nor line hath he;
  • He stands in the meadows wide,—
  • Nor gun nor scythe to see.
  • Sure some god his eye enchants:
  • What he knows nobody wants.
  • In the wood he travels glad,
  • Without better fortune had,
  • Melancholy without bad.
  • Knowledge this man prizes best
  • Seems fantastic to the rest:
  • Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,
  • Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds,
  • Boughs on which the wild bees settle
  • Tints that spot the violet's petal,
  • Why Nature loves the number five,
  • And why the star-form she repeats:
  • Lover of all things alive,
  • Wonderer at all he meets,
  • Wonderer chiefly at himself,
  • Who can tell him what he is?
  • Or how meet in human elf
  • Coming and past eternities?

• • 2.

  • And such I knew, a forest seer,
  • A minstrel of the natural year,
  • Foreteller of the vernal ides,
  • Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
  • A lover true, who knew by heart
  • Each joy the mountain dales impart;
  • It seemed that Nature could not raise
  • A plant in any secret place,
  • In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
  • Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
  • Under the snow, between the rocks,
  • In damp fields known to bird and fox.
  • But he would come in the very hour
  • It opened in its virgin bower,
  • As if a sunbeam showed the place.
  • And tell its long-descended race.
  • It seemed as if the breezes brought him
  • It seemed as if the sparrows taught him
  • As if by secret sight he knew
  • Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.
  • Many haps fall in the field
  • Seldom seen by wishful eyes
  • But all her shows did Nature yield,
  • To please and win this pilgrim wise.
  • He saw the partridge drum in the woods;
  • He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
  • He found the tawny thrushes' broods;
  • And the shy hawk did wait for him;
  • What others did at distance hear,
  • And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
  • Was shown to this philosopher,
  • And at his bidding seemed to come.

• • 3.

  • In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang
  • Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;
  • He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
  • The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;
  • Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
  • And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
  • He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
  • The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,
  • And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,
  • Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.
  • He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,
  • With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls,—
  • One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
  • Declares the close of its green century.
  • Low lies the plant to whose creation went
  • Sweet influence from every element;
  • Whose living towers the years conspired to build,
  • Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.
  • Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,
  • He roamed, content alike with man and beast
  • Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
  • There the red morning touched him with its light.
  • Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,
  • So long he roved at will the boundless shade.
  • The timid it concerns to ask their way,
  • And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,
  • To make no step until the event is known,
  • And ills to come as evils past bemoan.
  • Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps
  • To spy what danger on his pathway creeps;
  • Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
  • His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;
  • Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road
  • By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.

• • 4.

  • 'Twas one of the charmed days
  • When the genius of God doth flow,
  • The wind may alter twenty ways,
  • A tempest cannot blow;
  • It may blow north, it still is warm;
  • Or south, it still is clear;
  • Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;
  • Or west, no thunder fear.
  • The musing peasant lowly great
  • Beside the forest water sate;
  • The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown
  • Composed the network of his throne;
  • The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,
  • Was burnished to a floor of glass,
  • Painted with shadows green and proud
  • Of the tree and of the cloud.
  • He was the heart of all the scene;
  • On him the sun looked more serene;
  • To hill and cloud his face was known,—
  • It seemed the likeness of their own;
  • They knew by secret sympathy
  • The public child of earth and sky.
  • ‘You ask,’ he said, ‘what guide
  • Me through trackless thickets led,
  • Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide.
  • I found the water's bed.
  • The watercourses were my guide;
  • I travelled grateful by their side,
  • Or through their channel dry;
  • They led me through the thicket damp,
  • Through brake and fern, the beavers’ camp,
  • Through beds of granite cut my road,
  • And their resistless friendship showed:
  • The falling waters led me,
  • The foodful waters fed me,
  • And brought me to the lowest land,
  • Unerring to the ocean sand.
  • The moss upon the forest bark
  • Was pole-star when the night was dark;
  • The purple berries in the wood
  • Supplied me necessary food;
  • For Nature ever faithful is
  • To such as trust her faithfulness.
  • When the forest shall mislead me,
  • When the night and morning lie,
  • When sea and land refuse to feed me,
  • 'T will be time enough to die;
  • Then will yet my mother yield
  • A pillow in her greenest field,
  • Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
  • The clay of their departed lover.'