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brahma.

- If the red slayer think he slays,
- Or if the slain think he is slain,
- They know not well the subtle ways
- I keep, and pass, and turn again.
- Far or forgot to me is near;
- Shadow and sunlight are the same;
- The vanished gods to me appear;
- And one to me are shame and fame.
- They reckon ill who leave me out;
- When me they fly, I am the wings;
- I am the doubter and the doubt,
- And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
- The strong gods pine for my abode,
- And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
- But thou, meek lover of the good!
- Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

fate.

- Deep in the man sits fast his fate
- To mould his fortunes mean or great;
- Unknown to Cromwell as to me
- Was Cromwell's measure or degree;
- Unknown to him as to his horse,
- If he than his groom be better or worse.
- He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs,
- With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,
- Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
- Broad England harbored not his peer:
- Obeying Time, the last to own
- The Genius from its cloudy throne.
- For the prevision is allied
- Unto the thing so signified;
- Or say, the foresight that awaits
- Is the same Genius that creates.

freedom.

- Once I wished I might rehearse
- Freedom's pæan in my verse,
- That the slave who caught the strain
- Should throb until he snapped his chain,
- But the Spirit said, ‘Not so;
- Speak it not, or speak it low;
- Name not lightly to be said,
- Gift too precious to be prayed,
- Passion not to be expressed
- But by heaving of the breast:
- Yet,—wouldst thou the mountain find
- Where this deity is shrined,
- Who gives to seas and sunset skies
- Their unspent beauty of surprise,
- And, when it lists him, waken can
- Brute or savage into man;
- Or, if in thy heart he shine,
- Blends the starry fates with thine,
- Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee.
- And makes thy thoughts archangels be;
- Freedom's secret wilt thou know?—
- Counsel not with flesh and blood;
- Loiter not for cloak or food;
- Right thou feelest, rush to do.’

ode.
sung in the town hall, concord, july 4, 1857.

- O tenderly the haughty day
- Fills his blue urn with fire;
- One morn is in the mighty heaven,
- And one in our desire.
- The cannon booms from town to town,
- Our pulses beat not less,
- The joy-bells chime their tidings down,
- Which children's voices bless.
- For He that flung the broad blue fold
- O'er-mantling land and sea,
- One third part of the sky unrolled
- For the banner of the free.
- The men are ripe of Saxon kind
- To build an equal state,—
- To take the statute from the mind
- And make of duty fate.
- United States! the ages plead,—
- Present and Past in under-song,—
- Go put your creed into your deed,
- Nor speak with double tongue.
- For sea and land don't understand,
- Nor skies without a frown
- See rights for which the one hand fights
- By the other cloven down.
- Be just at home; then write your scroll
- Of honor o'er the sea,
- And bid the broad Atlantic roll,
- A ferry of the free.
- And henceforth there shall be no chain,
- Save underneath the sea
- The wires shall murmur through the main
- Sweet songs of liberty.
- The conscious stars accord above,
- The waters wild below,
- And under, through the cable wove,
- Her fiery errands go.
- For He that worketh high and wise,
- Nor pauses in his plan,
- Will take the sun out of the skies
- Ere freedom out of man.

boston hymn.
read in music hall, january 1, 1863.

- The word of the Lord by night
- To the watching Pilgrims came,
- As they sat by the seaside,
- And filled their hearts with flame.
- God said, I am tired of kings,
- I suffer them no more;
- Up to my ear the morning brings
- The ontrage of the poor.
- Think ye I made this ball
- A field of havoc and war,
- Where tyrants great and tyrants small
- Might harry the weak and poor?
- My angel,—his name is Freedom,—
- Choose him to be your king;
- He shall cut pathways east and west
- And fend you with his wing.
- Lo! I uncover the land
- Which I hid of old time in the West,
- As the sculptor uncovers the statue
- When he has wrought his best;
- I show Columbia, of the rocks
- Which dip their foot in the seas
- And soar to the air-borne flocks
- Of clouds and the boreal fleece.
- I will divide my goods;
- Call in the wretch and slave:
- None shall rule but the humble,
- And none but Toil shall have.
- I will have never a noble,
- No lineage counted great;
- Fishers and choppers and ploughmen
- Shall constitute a state.
- Go, cut down trees in the forest
- And trim the straightest boughs;
- Cut down trees in the forest
- And build me a wooden house.
- Call the people together,
- The young men and the sires,
- The digger in the harvest field,
- Hireling and him that hires;
- And here in a pine state-house
- They shall choose men to rule
- In every needful faculty,
- In church and state and school.
- Lo, now! if these poor men
- Can govern the land and sea
- And make just laws below the sun,
- As planets faithful be.
- And ye shall succor men;
- 'T is nobleness to serve;
- Help them who cannot help again:
- Beware from right to swerve.
- I break your bonds and masterships,
- And I unchain the slave:
- Free be his heart and hand henceforth
- As wind and wandering wave.
- I cause from every creature
- His proper good to flow:
- As much as he is and doeth,
- So much he shall bestow.
- But, laying hands on another
- To coin his labor and sweat,
- He goes in pawn to his victim
- For eternal years in debt.
- To-day unbind the captive,
- So only are ye unbound;
- Lift up a people from the dust,
- Trump of their rescue, sound!
- Pay ransom to the owner
- And fill the bag to the brim.
- Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
- And ever was. Pay him.
- O North! give him beauty for rags,
- And honor, O South! for his shame;
- Nevada! coin thy golden crags
- With Freedom's image and name.
- Up! and the dusky race
- That sat in darkness long,—
- Be swift their feet as antelopes,
- And as behemoth strong.
- Come, East and West and North,
- By races, as snow-flakes,
- And carry my purpose forth,
- Which neither halts nor shakes.
- My will fulfilled shall be,
- For, in daylight or in dark,
- My thunderbolt has eyes to see
- His way home to the mark.

voluntaries

i.

- Low and mournful be the strain,
- Haughty thought be far from me;
- Tones of penitence and pain,
- Meanings of the tropic sea;
- Low and tender in the cell
- Where a captive sits in chains,
- Crooning ditties treasured well
- From his Afric's torrid plains.
- Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
- Hapless sire to hapless son,—
- Was the wailing song he breathed,
- And his chain when life was done.
- What his fault, or what his crime?
- Or what ill planet crossed his prime?
- Heart too soft and will too weak
- To front the fate that crouches near,—
- Dove beneath the vulture's beak;—
- Will song dissuade the thirsty spear?
- Dragged from his mother's arms and breast,
- Displaced, disfurnished here,
- His wistful toil to do his best
- Chilled by a ribald jeer.
- Great men in the Senate sate,
- Sage and hero, side by side,
- Building for their sons the State,
- Which they shall rule with pride.
- They forbore to break the chain
- Which bound the dusky tribe,
- Checked by the owners' fierce disdain,
- Lured by “Union” as the bribe.
- Destiny sat by, and said,
- ‘Pang for pang your seed shall pay,
- Hide in false peace your coward head,
- I bring round the harvest day.’

ii.

- Freedom all winged expands,
- Nor perches in a narrow place;
- Her broad van seeks unplanted lands;
- She loves a poor and virtuous race.
- Clinging to a colder zone
- Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down,
- The snow-flake is her banner's star,
- Her stripes the boreal streamers are.
- Long she loved the Northman well;
- Now the iron age is done,
- She will not refuse to dwell
- With the offspring of the Sun;
- Foundling of the desert far,
- Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,
- He roves unhurt the burning ways
- In climates of the summer star.
- He has avenues to God
- Hid from men of Northern brain,
- Far beholding, without cloud.
- What these with slowest steps attain.
- If once the generous chief arrive
- To lead him willing to be led,
- For freedom he will strike and strive,
- And drain his heart till he be dead.

iii.

- In an age of fops and toys,
- Wanting wisdom, void of right,
- Who shall nerve heroic boys
- To hazard all in Freedom's fight,—
- Break sharply off their jolly games,
- Forsake their comrades gay
- And quit proud homes and youthful dames
- For famine, toil and fray?
- Yet on the nimble air benign
- Speed nimbler messages,
- That waft the breath of grace divine
- To hearts in sloth and ease.
- So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
- So near is God to man,
- When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
- The youth replies, I can.

iv.

- O, well for the fortunate soul
- Which Music's wings infold,
- Stealing away the memory
- Of sorrows new and old!
- Yet happier he whose inward sight,
- Stayed on his subtile thought,
- Shuts his sense on toys of time,
- To vacant bosoms brought.
- But best befriended of the God
- He who, in evil times,
- Warned by an inward voice,
- Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
- Biding by his rule and choice,
- Feeling only the fiery thread
- Leading over heroic ground,
- Walled with mortal terror round,
- To the aim which him allures,
- And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
- Peril around, all else appalling,
- Cannon in front and leaden rain
- Him duty through the clarion calling
- To the van called not in vain.
- Stainless soldier on the walls,
- Knowing this,—and knows no more,—
- Whoever fights, whoever falls,
- Justice conquers evermore,
- Justice after as before,—
- And he who battles on her side,
- God, though he were ten times slain,
- Crowns him victor glorified,
- Victor over death and pain.

v.

- Blooms the laurel which belongs
- To the valiant chief who fights;
- I see the wreath, I hear the songs
- Lauding the Eternal Rights,
- Victors over daily wrongs:
- Awful victors, they misguide
- Whom they will destroy,
- And their coming triumph hide
- In our downfall, or our joy:
- They reach no term, they never sleep,
- In equal strength through space abide;
- Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,
- The strong they slay, the swift outstride:
- Fate's grass grows rank in valley elods,
- And rankly on the castled steep,—
- Speak it firmly, these are gods,
- All are ghosts beside.

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.]

- The rocky nook with hill-tops three
- Looked eastward from the farms,
- And twice each day the flowing sea
- Took Boston in its arms;
- The men of yore were stout and poor,
- And sailed for bread to every shore.
- And where they went on trade intent
- They did what freemen can,
- Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
- The merchant was a man.
- The world was made for honest trade,—
- To plant and eat be none afraid.
- The waves that rocked them on the deep
- To them their secret told;
- Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
- “Like us be free and bold!”
- The honest waves refused to slaves
- The empire of the ocean caves.
- Old Europe groans with palaces,
- Has lords enough and more;—
- We plant and build by foaming seas
- A city of the poor;—
- For day by day could Boston Bay
- Their honest labor overpay.
- We grant no dukedoms to the few,
- We hold like rights, and shall;—
- Equal on Sunday in the pew,
- On Monday in the mall,
- For what avail the plough or sail,
- Or land or life, if freedom fail?
- The noble craftsman we promote,
- Disown the knave and fool;
- Each honest man shall have his vote,
- Each child shall have his school.
- A union then of honest men,
- Or union never more again.
- The wild rose and the barberry thorn
- Hung out their summer pride,
- Where now on heated pavements worn
- The feet of millions stride.
- Fair rose the planted hills behind
- The good town on the bay,
- And where the western hills declined
- The prairie stretched away.
- What care though rival cities soar
- Along the stormy coast,
- Penn's town, New York and Baltimore,
- If Boston knew the most!
- They laughed to know the world so wide;
- The mountains said, “Good-day!
- We greet you well, you Saxon men,
- Up with your towns and stay!”
- The world was made for honest trade,—
- To plant and eat be none afraid.
- “For you,” they said, “no barriers be,
- For you no sluggard rest;
- Each street leads downward to the sea,
- Or landward to the west.”
- O happy town beside the sea,
- Whose roads lead everywhere to all;
- Than thine no deeper moat can be,
- No stouter fence, no steeper wall!
- Bad news from George on the English throne;
- “You are thriving well,” said he;
- “Now by these presents be it known
- You shall pay us a tax on tea;
- 'T is very small,—no load at all,—
- Honor enough that we send the call.”
- “Not so,” said Boston, “good my lord,
- We pay your governors here
- Abundant for their bed and board,
- Six thousand pounds a year.
- (Your Highness knows our homely word,)
- Millions for self-government,
- But for tribute never a cent.”
- The cargo came! and who could blame
- If Indians seized the tea,
- And, chest by chest, let down the same,
- Into the laughing sea?
- For what avail the plough or sail,
- Or land or life, if freedom fail?
- The townsmen braved the English king,
- Found friendship in the French,
- And honor joined the patriot ring
- Low on their wooden bench.
- O bounteous seas that never fail!
- O day remembered yet!
- O happy port that spied the sail
- Which wafted Lafayette!
- Pole-star of light in Europe's night,
- That never faltered from the right.
- Kings shook with fear, old empires crave
- The secret force to find
- Which fired the little State to save
- The rights of all mankind.
- But right is might through all the world;
- Province to province faithful clung,
- Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,
- Till Freedom cheered and joy-bells rung.
- The sea returning day by day
- Restores the world-wide mart;
- So let each dweller on the Bay
- Fold Boston in his heart,
- Till these echoes be choked with snows,
- Or over the town blue ocean flows.
- Let the blood of her hundred thousands
- Throb in each manly vein;
- And the wits of all her wisest,
- Make sunshine in her brain.
- For you can teach the lightning speech,
- And round the globe your voices reach.
- And each shall care for other,
- And each to each shall bend,
- To the poor a noble brother,
- To the good an equal friend.
- A blessing through the ages thus
- Shield all thy roofs and towers!
- Godwith the fathers, so with us,
- Thou darling town of ours!

This poem was begun several years before the War, but was not finished until the occasion of its delivery in 1873, the anniversary festival, when the piece was entirely remodelled.

Some of the suppressed stanzas are here given.

The poem began thus:—

- The land that has no song
- Shall have a song to-day
- The granite ledge is dumb too long,
- The vales have much to say:
- For you can teach the lightning speech,
- And round the globe your voices reach.

After the lines on Lafayette followed these stanzas:—

- O pity that I pause!
- The song disdaining shuns
- To name the noble sires, because
- Of the unworthy sons
- For what avail the plough or sail,
- Or land or life, if freedom fail?
- But there was chaff within the flour,
- And one was false in ten,
- And reckless clerks in lust of power
- Forgot the rights of men;
- Cruel and blind did file their mind,
- And sell the blood of human kind.
- Your town is full of gentle names,
- By patriots once were watchwords made;
- Those war-cry names are muffled shames
- On recreant sons mislaid.
- What slave shall dare a name to wear
- Once Freedom's passport everywhere?
- O welaway' if this be so,
- And man cannot afford the right,
- And if the wage of love be woe,
- And honest dealing yield despite.
- For what avail or plough or sail,
- Or land or life, if freedom fail?
- Hie to the woods, sleek citizen,
- Back to the sea, go, landsman, down,
- Clumb the White Hills, fat alderman,
- And vacant leave the town,
- Ere these echoes be choked with snows,
- Or over the roofs blue Ocean flows.

letters.

- Every day brings a ship,
- Every ship brings a word;
- Well for those who have no fear,
- Looking seaward well assured
- That the word the vessel brings
- Is the word they wish to hear.

rubies.

- They brought me rubies from the mine,
- And held them to the sun;
- I said, they are drops of frozen wine
- From Eden's vats that run.
- I looked again,—I thought them hearts
- Of friends to friends unknown;
- Tides that should warm each neighboring life
- Are locked in sparkling stone.
- But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
- To break enchanted ice,
- And give love's scarlet tides to flow,—
- When shall that sun arise?

the test.
(Musa loquitur.)

- I hung my verses in the wind,
- Time and tide their faults may find.
- All were winnowed through and through,
- Five lines lasted sound and true;
- Five were smelted in a pot
- Than the South more fierce and hot;
- These the siroc could not melt,
- Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
- And the meaning was more white
- Than July's meridian light.
- Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
- Nor time unmake what poets know.
- Have you eyes to find the five
- Which five hundred did survive?

solution.

- I am the Muse who sung alway
- By Jove, at dawn of the first day.
- Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought
- To fire the stagnant earth with thought:
- On spawning slime my song prevails,
- Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales;
- Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn,
- Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born.
- Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race,
- And Nile substructs her granite base,—
- Tented Tartary, columned Nile,—
- And, under vines, on rocky isle,
- Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak,
- Forward stepped the perfect Greek:
- That wit and joy might find a tongue,
- And earth grow civil, Homer sung.
- Flown to Italy from Greece,
- I brooded long and held my peace,
- For I am wont to sing uncalled,
- And in days of evil plight
- Unlock doors of new delight;
- And sometimes mankind I appalled
- With a bitter horoscope,
- With spasms of terror for balm of hope.
- Then by better thought I lead
- Bards to speak what nations need;
- So I folded me in fears,
- And Dante searched the triple spheres,
- Moulding nature at his will,
- So shaped, so colored, swift or still,
- And, sculptor-like, his large design
- Etched on Alp and Apennine.
- Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur,
- Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power,
- England's genius filled all measure
- Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
- Gave to the mind its emperor,
- And life was larger than before:
- Nor sequent centuries could hit
- Orbit and sum of Shakspeare's wit.
- The men who lived with him became
- Poets, for the air was fame.
- Far in the North, where polar night
- Holds in check the frolic light,
- In trance upborne past mortal goal
- The Swede Emanuel leads the soul.
- Through snows above, mines underground,
- The inks of Erebus he found;
- Rehearsed to men the damned wails
- On which the seraph music sails.
- In spirit-worlds he trod alone,
- But walked the earth unmarked, unknown.
- The near by-stander caught no sound,—
- Yet they who listened far aloof
- Heard readings of the skyey roof,
- And felt, beneath, the quaking ground;
- And his air-sown, unheeded words,
- In the next age, are flaming swords.
- In newer days of war and trade,
- Romance forgot, and faith decayed,
- When Science armed and guided war,
- And clerks the Janus-gates unbar,
- When France, where poet never grew,
- Halved and dealt the globe anew,
- Goethe, raised o'er joy and strife,
- Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life
- And brought Olympian wisdom down
- To court and mart, To gown and town
- Stooping, his finger wrote in clay
- The open secret of to-day.
- So bloom the unfading petals five,
- And verses that all verse outlive.

hymn
sung at the second church, boston, at the ordination of rev. chandler robbins.

- We love the venerahle house
- Our fathers built to God;—
- In heaven are kept their grateful vows,
- Their dust endears the sod.
- Here holy thoughts a light have shed
- From many a radiant face,
- And prayers of humble virtue made
- The perfume of the place.
- And anxious hearts have pondered here
- The mystery of life,
- And prayed the eternal Light to clear
- Their doubts, and aid their strife.
- From humble tenements around
- Came up the pensive train,
- And in the church a blessing found
- That filled their homes again;
- For faith and peace and mighty love
- That from the Godhead flow,
- Showed them the life of Heaven above
- Springs from the life below.
- They live with God; their homes are dust;
- Yet here their children pray,
- And in this fleeting lifetime trust
- To find the narrow way.
- On him who by the altar stands,
- On him thy blessing fall,
- Speak through his lips thy pure commands,
- Thou heart that lovest all.

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Occasional and Misc. Pieces: brahma. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems) [1909]

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Part of: The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. (Fireside Edition).

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