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.)

astræ

• • Each the herald is who wrote
  • His rank, and quartered his own coat.
  • There is no king nor sovereign state
  • That can fix a hero's rate;
  • Each to all is venerable,
  • Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
  • Until he write, where all eyes rest,
  • Slave or master on his breast.
  • I saw men go up and down,
  • In the country and the town,
  • With this tablet on their neck,—
  • ‘Judgment and a judge we seek.’
  • Not to monarchs they repair,
  • Nor to learned jurist's chair;
  • But they hurry to their peers,
  • To their kinsfolk and their dears;
  • Louder than with speech they pray,—
  • ‘What am I? companion, say.’
  • And the friend not hesitates
  • To assign just place and mates;
  • Answers not in word or letter,
  • Yet is understood the better;
  • Each to each a looking-glass,
  • Reflects his figure that doth pass.
  • Every wayfarer he meets
  • What himself declared repeats,
  • What himself confessed records,
  • Sentences him in his words;
  • The form is his own corporal form,
  • And his thought the penal worm.
• • Yet shine forever virgin minds,
  • Loved by stars and purest winds,
  • Which, o'er passion throned sedate,
  • Have not hazarded their state;
  • Disconcert the searching spy,
  • Rendering to a curious eye
  • The durance of a granite ledge.
  • To those who gaze from the sea's edge
  • It is there for benefit;
  • It is there for purging light;,
  • There for purifying storms;
  • And its depths reflect all forms;
  • It cannot parley with the mean,—
  • Pure by impure is not seen.
  • For there's no sequestered grot,
  • Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
  • But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
  • Daily stoops to harbor there.