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.)

the harp.

• • One musician is sure,
  • His wisdom will not fail,
  • He has not tasted wine impure,
  • Nor bent to passion frail.
  • Age cannot cloud his memory,
  • Nor grief untune his voice,
  • Ranging down the ruled scale
  • From tone of joy to inward wail,
  • Tempering the pitch of all
  • In his windy cave.
  • He all the fables knows,
  • And in their causes tells,—
  • Knows Nature's rarest moods,
  • Ever on her secret broods.
  • The Muse of men is coy,
  • Oft courted will not come;
  • In palaces and market squares
  • Entreated, she is dumb;
  • But my minstrel knows and tells.
  • The counsel of the gods,
  • Knows of Holy Book the spells,
  • Knows the law of Night and Day,
  • And the heart of girl and boy,
  • The tragic and the gay,
  • And what is writ on Table Round
  • Of Arthur and his peers;
  • What sea and land discoursing say
  • In sidereal years.
  • He renders all his lore
  • In numbers wild as dreams,
  • Modulating all extremes,—
  • What the spangled meadow saith
  • To the children who have faith;
  • Only to children children sing,
  • Only to youth will spring be spring.
• • Who is the Bard thus magnified?
  • When did he sing? and where abide?
• • Chief of song where poets feast
  • Is the wind-harp which thou seest
  • In the casement at my side.
• • Æolian harp,
  • How strangely wise thy strain!
  • Gay for youth, gay for youth,
  • (Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)
  • In the hall at summer eve
  • Fate and Beauty skilled to weave
  • From the eager opening strings
  • Rung loud and bold the song.
  • Who but loved the wind-harp's note?
  • How should not the poet doat
  • On its mystic tongue,
  • With its primeval memory,
  • Reporting what old minstrels told
  • Of Merlin locked the harp within,—
  • Merlin paying the pain of sin,
  • Pent in a dungeon made of air,—
  • And some attain his voice to hear,
  • Words of pain and cries of fear,
  • But pillowed all on melody,
  • As fits the griefs of bards to be.
  • And what if that all-echoing shell,
  • Which thus the buried Past can tell,
  • Should rive the Future, and reveal
  • What his dread folds would fain conceal?
  • It shares the secret of the earth,
  • And of the kinds that owe her birth.
  • Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
  • But of the Overgods alone:
  • It trembles to the cosmic breath,—
  • As it heareth, so it saith;
  • Obeying meek the primal Cause,
  • It is the tongue of mundane laws.
  • And this, at least, I dare affirm,
  • Since genius too has bound and term,
  • There is no bard in all the choir,
  • Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
  • Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
  • Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,
  • Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
  • Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
  • Scott, the delight of generous boys,
  • Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,—
  • Not one of all can put in verse,
  • Or to this presence could rehearse
  • The sights and voices ravishing
  • The boy knew on the hills in spring,
  • When pacing through the oaks he heard
  • Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
  • The heavy grouse's sudden whir,
  • The rattle of the kingfisher;
  • Saw bonfires of the harlot flies
  • In the lowland, when day dies;
  • Or marked, benighted and forlorn,
  • The first far signal-fire of morn.
  • These syllables that Nature spoke,
  • And the thoughts that in him woke,
  • Can adequately utter none
  • Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
  • Therein I hear the Pace reel
  • The threads of man at their humming wheel,
  • The threads of life and power and pain,
  • So sweet and mournful falls the strain.
  • And best can teach its Delphian chord
  • How Nature to the soul is moored,
  • If once again that silent string,
  • As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.
• • Not long ago at eventide,
  • It seemed, so listening, at my sid
  • A window rose, and, to say sooth,
  • I looked forth on the fields of youth:
  • I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
  • I knew their forms in fancy weeds,
  • Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
  • Mates of my youth,—yet not my mates,
  • Stronger and bolder far than I,
  • With grace, with genius, well attired
  • And then as now from far admired,
  • Followed with love
  • They knew not of,
  • With passion cold and shy.
  • O joy, for what recoveries rare!
  • Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,
  • See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,—
  • Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!
  • Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil
  • Of life resurgent from the soil
  • Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.