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.)

musketaquid.

• • Because I was content with these poor fields,
  • Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
  • And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
  • The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
  • And granted me the freedom of their state,
  • And in their secret senate have prevailed
  • With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,
  • Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
  • And through my rock-like, solitary wont
  • Shot million rays of thought and tenderness.
  • For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the Spring
  • Visits the valley;—break away the clouds,—
  • I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air,
  • And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.
  • Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird,
  • Blue-coated,—flying before from tree to tree,
  • Courageous sing a delicate overture
  • To lead the tardy concert of the year.
  • Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;
  • And wide around, the marriage of the plants
  • Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain
  • The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag,
  • Hollow and lake, hill-side and pine arcade,
  • Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff
  • Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.
• • Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
  • Through which at will our Indian rivulet
  • Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
  • Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies
  • Here in pine houses built of new-fallen trees,
  • Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell.
  • Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road,
  • Or, it may be, a picture; to these men,
  • The landscape is an armory of powers,
  • Which, one by one, they know to draw and use
  • They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work;
  • They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,
  • And, like the chemist mid his loaded jars,
  • Draw from each stratum its adapted use
  • To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal.
  • They turn the frost upon their chemic heap,
  • They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain,
  • They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime,
  • And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow,
  • Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods
  • O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year,
  • They fight the elements with elements,
  • (That one would say, meadow and forest walked,
  • Transmuted in these men to rule their like,)
  • And by the order in the field disclose
  • The order regnant in the yeoman's brain.
• • What these strong masters wrote at large in miles,
  • I followed in small copy in my acre;
  • For there's no rood has not a star above it;
  • The cordial quality of pear or plum
  • Ascends as gladly in a single tree
  • As in broad orchards resonant with bees;
  • And every atom poises for itself,
  • And for the whole. The gentle deities
  • Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds,
  • The innumerable tenements of beauty,
  • The miracle of generative force,
  • Far-reaching concords of astronomy
  • Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds;
  • Better, the linked purpose of the whole,
  • And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty
  • In the glad home plain-dealing Nature gave.
  • The polite found me impolite; the great
  • Would mortify me, but in vain; for still
  • I am a willow of the wilderness,
  • Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts
  • My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,
  • A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,
  • A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,
  • Salve my worst wounds.
  • For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear:
  • ‘Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie?
  • Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass
  • Into the winter night's extinguished mood?
  • Canst thou shine now, then darkle,
  • And being latent, feel thyself no less?
  • As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,
  • The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure,
  • Yet envies none, none are unenviable.’