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.)

my garden.

• • If I could put my woods in song
  • And tell what's there enjoyed,
  • All men would to my gardens throng,
  • And leave the cities void.
• • In my plot no tulips blow,—
  • Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
  • And rank the savage maples grow
  • From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.
• • My garden is a forest ledge
  • Which older forests bound;
  • The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
  • Then plunge to depths profound.
• • Here once the Deluge ploughed,
  • Laid the terraces, one by one;
  • Ebbing later whence it flowed,
  • They bleach and dry in the sun.
• • The sowers made haste to depart,—
  • The wind and the birds which sowed it;
  • Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
  • Planted these, and tempests flowed it.
• • Waters that wash my garden side
  • Play not in Nature's lawful web,
  • They heed not moon or solar tide,—
  • Five years elapse from flood to ebb.
• • Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
  • And every god,—none did refuse;
  • And be sure at last came Love,
  • And after Love, the Muse.
• • Keen ears can catch a syllable,
  • As if one spake to another,
  • In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
  • And what the whispering grasses smother.
• • Æolian harps in the pine
  • Ring with the song of the Fates;
  • Infant Bacchus in the vine,—
  • Far distant yet his chorus waits.
• • Canst thou copy in verse one chime
  • Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,
  • Write in a book the morning's prime,
  • Or match with words that tender sky
• • Wonderful verse.of the gods,
  • Of one import, of varied tone;
  • They chant the bliss of their abodes
  • To man imprisoned in his own.
• • Ever the words of the gods resound;
  • But the porches of man's ear
  • Seldom in this low life's round
  • Are unsealed, that he may hear
• • Wandering voices in the air
  • And murmurs in the wold
  • Speak what I cannot declare,
  • Yet cannot all withhold.
• • When the shadow fell on the lake,
  • The whirlwind in ripples wrote
  • Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
  • And omens above thought.
• • But the meanings cleave to the lake,
  • Cannot be carried in book or urn;
  • Go thy ways now, come later back,
  • On waves and hedges still they burn.
• • These the fates of men forecast,
  • Of better men than live to-day;
  • If who can read them comes at last
  • He will spell in the sculpture, ‘Stay.’