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.

ii.

• • As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace,
  • So waved the pine-tree through my thought And fanned the dreams it never brought.
• • ‘Whether is better, the gift or the donor?
  • Come to me,’
  • Quoth the pine-tree,
  • ‘I am the giver of honor.
  • My garden is the cloven rock,
  • And my manure the snow;
  • And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,
  • In summer's scorching glow.
  • He is great who can live by me.
  • The rough and bearded forester
  • Is better than the lord;
  • God fills the scrip and canister,
  • Sin piles the loaded board.
  • The lord is the peasant that was,
  • The peasant the lord that shall be;
  • The lord is hay, the peasant grass,
  • One dry, and one the living tree.
  • Who liveth by the ragged pine
  • Foundeth a heroic line;
  • Who liveth in the palace hall
  • Waneth fast and spendeth all.
  • He goes to my savage haunts,
  • With his chariot and his care;
  • My twilight realm he disenchants,
  • And finds his prison there.
• • ‘What prizes the town and the tower?
  • Only what the pine-tree yields;
  • Sinew that subdued the fields;
  • The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods
  • Chants his hymn to hills and floods,
  • Whom the city's poisoning spleen
  • Made not pale, or fat, or lean;
  • Whom the rain and the wind purgeth,
  • Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth,
  • In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth,
  • In whose feet the lion rusheth,
  • Iron arms, and iron mould,
  • That know not fear, fatigue, or cold.
  • I give my rafters to his boat,
  • My billets to his boiler's throat,
  • And I will swim the ancient sea
  • To float my child to victory,
  • And grant to dwellers with the pine
  • Dominion o'er the palm and vine.
  • Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
  • Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
  • Cut a bough from my parent stem,
  • And dip it in thy porcelain vase;
  • A little while each russet gem
  • Will swell and rise with wonted grace;
  • But when it seeks enlarged supplies,
  • The orphan of the forest dies.
  • Whoso walks in solitude
  • And inhabiteth the wood,
  • Choosing light, wave, rock and bird,
  • Before the money-loving herd,
  • Into that forester shall pass.
  • From these companions, power and grace.
  • Clean shall he be, without, within,
  • From the old adhering sin,
  • All ill dissolving in the light
  • Of his triumphant piercing sight:
  • Not vain, sour, nor frivolous;
  • Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous;
  • Grave, chaste, contented, though retired,
  • And of all other men desired.
  • On him the light of star and moon
  • Shall fall with purer radiance down;
  • All constellations of the sky
  • Shed their virtue through his eye.
  • Him Nature giveth for defence
  • His formidable innocence;
  • The mounting sap, the shells, the sea,
  • All spheres, all stones, his helpers be;
  • He shall meet the speeding year,
  • Without wailing, without fear;
  • He shall be happy in his love,
  • Like to like shall joyful prove;
  • He shall be happy whilst he wooes,
  • Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.
  • But if with gold she bind her hair,
  • And deck her breast with diamond,
  • Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear,
  • Though thou lie alone on the ground.
• • ‘Heed the old oracles,
  • Ponder my spells;
  • Song wakes in my pinnacles
  • When the wind swells.
  • Soundeth the prophetic wind,
  • The shadows shake on the rock behind,
  • And the countless leaves of the pine are strings
  • Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.
  • Hearken! Hearken!
  • If thou wouldst know the mystic song
  • Chanted when the sphere was young.
  • Aloft, abroad, the pæan swells;
  • O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells?
  • O wise man! hear'st thou the least part?
  • 'T is the chronicle of art.
  • To the open ear it sings
  • Sweet the genesis of things,
  • Of tendency through endless ages,
  • Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,
  • Of rounded worlds, of space and time,
  • Of the old flood's subsiding slime,
  • Of chemic matter, force and form,
  • Of poles and powers, cold, wet and warm:
  • The rushing metamorphosis
  • Dissolving all that fixture is,
  • Melts things that be to things that seem,
  • And solid nature to a dream.
  • O, listen to the undersong,
  • The ever old, the ever young;
  • And, far within those cadent pauses,
  • The chorus of the ancient Causes!
  • Delights the dreadful Destiny
  • To fling his voice into the tree,
  • And shock thy weak ear with a note
  • Breathed from the everlasting throat.
  • In music he repeats the pang
  • Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.
  • O mortal! thy ears are stones;
  • These echoes are laden with tones
  • Which only the pure can hear;
  • Thou canst not catch what they recite
  • Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,
  • Of man to come, of human life,
  • Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.’
• • Once again the pine-tree sung:—
  • ‘Speak not thy speech my boughs among: Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;
  • My hours are peaceful centuries.
  • Talk no more with feeble tongue;
  • No more the fool of space and time,
  • Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme.
  • Only thy Americans
  • Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,
  • But the runes that I rehearse
  • Understands the universe;
  • The least breath my boughs which tossed
  • Brings again the Pentecost;
  • To every soul resounding clear
  • In a voice of solemn cheer,—
  • “Am I not thine? Are not these thine?”
  • And they reply, “Forever mine!”
  • My branches speak Italian,
  • English, German, Basque, Castilian,
  • Mountain speech to Highlanders,
  • Ocean tongues to islanders,
  • To Fin and Lap and swart Malay,
  • To each his bosom-secret say.
• • Come learn with me the fatal song
  • Which knits the world in music strong,
  • Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,
  • Of things with things. of times with times,
  • Primal chimes of sun and shade,
  • Of sound and echo man and maid,
  • The land reflected in the flood,
  • Body with shadow still pursued.
  • For Nature beats in perfect tune,
  • And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
  • Whether she work in land or sea,
  • Or hide underground her alchemy.
  • Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
  • Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
  • But it carves the bow of beauty there.
  • And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.
  • The wood is wiser far than thou;
  • The wood and wave each other know
  • Not unrelated, unaffied,
  • But to each thought and thing allied,
  • Is perfect Nature's every part,
  • Rooted in the mighty Heart.
  • But thou, poor child! unbound. unrhymed,
  • Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed,
  • Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded?
  • Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded?
  • Who thee divorced, deceived and left?
  • Thee of thy faith who hath bereft,
  • And torn the ensigns from thy brow,
  • And sunk the immortal eye so low?
  • Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,
  • Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender
  • For royal man;— they thee confess
  • An exile from the wilderness, —
• • The hills where health with health agrees,
  • And the wise soul expels disease.
  • Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign
  • By which thy hurt thou may'st divine.
  • When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff,
  • Or see the wide shore from thy skiff,
  • To thee the horizon shall express
  • But emptiness on emptiness;
  • There lives no man of Nature's worth
  • In the circle of the earth;
  • And to thine eye the vast skies fall,
  • Dire and satirical,
  • On clucking hens and prating fools,
  • On thieves, on drudges and on dolls.
  • And thou shalt say to the Most High,
  • “Godhead! all this astronomy,
  • And fate and practice and invention,
  • Strong art and beautiful pretension,
  • This radiant pomp of sun and star,
  • Throes that were, and worlds that are,
  • Behold! were in vain and in vain; —
  • It cannot be,—I will look again.
  • Surely now will the curtain rise,
  • And earth's fit tenant me surprise; —
  • But the curtain doth not rise,
  • And Nature has miscarried wholly
  • Into failure, into folly.”
• • ‘Alas! thine is the bankruptey,
  • Blessed Nature so to see.
  • Come, lay thee in my soothing shade,
  • And heal the hurts which sin has made,
  • I see thee in the crowd alone;
  • I will be thy companion,
  • Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,
  • And build to them a final tomb;
  • Let the starred shade that nightly falls
  • Still celebrate their funerals,
  • And the bell of beetle and of bee
  • Knell their melodious memory.
  • Behind thee leave thy merchandise,
  • Thy churches and thy charities;
  • And leave thy peacock wit behind;
  • Enough for thee the primal mind
  • That flows in streams, that breathes in wind;
  • Leave all thy pedant lore apart;
  • God hid the whole world in thy heart.
  • Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,
  • Gives all to them who all renounce.
  • The rain comes when the wind calls;
  • The river knows the way to the sea;
  • Without a pilot it runs and falls,
  • Blessing all lands with its charity;
  • The sea tosses and foams to find
  • Its way up to the cloud and wind;
  • The shadow sitsc close to the flying ball;
  • The date fails not on the palm-tree tall;
  • And thou,—go burn thy wormy pages,—
  • Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages.
  • Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain
  • To find what bird had piped the strain:—
  • Seek not, and the little eremite
  • Flies gayly forth and sings in sight.
• • ‘Hearken once more!
  • I will tell thee the mundane lore.
  • Older am I than thy numbers wot,
  • Change I may, but I pass not,
  • Hitherto all things fast abide,
  • And anchored in the tempest ride.
  • Trenchant time behoves to hurry
  • All to yean and all to bury:
  • All the forms are fugitive,
  • But the substances survive.
  • Ever fresh the broad creation,
  • A divine improvisation,
  • From the heart of God proceeds,
  • A single will, a million deeds.
  • Once slept the world an egg of stone,
  • And pulse, and sound, and light was none;
  • And God said, “Throb!” and there was motion
  • And the vast mass became vast ocean.
  • Onward and on, the eternal Pan,
  • Who layeth the world's incessant plan,
  • Halteth never in one shape,
  • But forever doth escape,
  • Like wave or flame, into new forms
  • Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms.
  • I, that to-day am a pine,
  • Yesterday was a bundle of grass.
  • He is free and libertine,
  • Pouring of his power the wine
  • To every age, to every race;
  • Unto every race and age
  • He emptieth the beverage;
  • Unto each, and unto all,
  • Maker and original.
  • The world is the ring of his spells,
  • And the play of his miracles.
  • As he giveth to all to drink,
  • Thus or thus they are and think.
• • With one drop sheds form and feature;
  • With the next a special nature;
  • The third adds heat's indulgent spark;
  • The fourth gives light which eats the dark;
  • Into the fifth himself he flings,
  • And conscious Law is King of kings.
  • As the bee through the garden ranges,
  • From world to world the godhead changes;
  • As the sheep go feeding in the waste,
  • From form to form He maketh haste;
  • This vault which glows immense with light
  • Is the inn where he lodges for a night.
  • What recks such Traveller if the bowers
  • Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers
  • A bunch of fragrant lilies be,
  • Or the stars of eternity?
  • Alike to him the better, the worse,—
  • The glowing angel, the outcast corse.
  • Thou metest him by centuries,
  • And lo! he passes like the breeze;
  • Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,
  • He hides in pure transparency;
  • Thou askest in fountains and in fires,
  • He is the essence that inquires.
  • He is the axis of the star;
  • He is the sparkle of the spar;
  • He is the heart of every creature;
  • He is the meaning of each feature;
  • And his mind is the sky.
  • Than all it holds more deep, more high.’