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.)

blight.

• • Give me truths;
  • For I am weary of the surfaces,
  • And die of inanition. If I knew
  • Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
  • Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
  • Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
  • Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,
  • And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
  • Draw untold juices from the common earth,
  • Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
  • Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
  • By sweet affinities to human flesh,
  • Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,—
  • O, that were much, and I could be a part
  • Of the round day, related to the sun
  • And planted world, and full executor
  • Of their imperfect functions.
  • But these young scholars, who invade our hills,
  • Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
  • And travelling often in the cut he makes,
  • Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
  • And all their botany is Latin names.
  • The old men studied magic in the flowers,
  • And human fortunes in astronomy,
  • And an omnipotence in chemistry,
  • Preferring things to names, for these were men,
  • Were unitarians of the united world,
  • And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
  • They caught the footsteps of the Same. Our eyes
  • Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
  • And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
  • And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
  • The injured elements say, ‘Not in us;’
  • And night and day, ocean and continent,
  • Fire, plant and mineral say, ‘Not in us;’
  • And haughtily return us stare for stare.
  • For we invade them impiously for gain;
  • We devastate them unreligiously,
  • And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
  • Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
  • Only what to our griping toil is due;
  • But the sweet affluence of love and song,
  • The rich results of the divine consents
  • Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
  • The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
  • And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
  • And pirates of the universe, shut out
  • Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
  • Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
  • The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
  • Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
  • And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;
  • And life, shorn of its venerable length,
  • Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
  • And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
  • And, in its highest noon and wantonnes;
  • Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
  • Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
  • And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
  • Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,
  • Chilled with a miserly comparison
  • Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.