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.)

sea-shore.

• • I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea
  • Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?
  • Am I not always here, thy summer home?
  • Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?
  • My breath thy healthful climate in the heats.
  • My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?
  • Was ever building like my terraces?
  • Was ever conch magnificent as mine?
  • Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn
  • A little hut suffices like a town.
  • I make your sculptured architecture vain,
  • Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,
  • And carve the coastwise mountain into caves
  • Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes,
  • Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs
  • Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab
  • Older than all thy race.
• • Behold the Sea,
  • The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
  • Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
  • Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;
  • Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
  • Purger of earth, and medicine of men;
  • Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
  • Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
  • And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
  • Giving a hint of that which changes not.
  • Rich are the sea-gods:—who gives gifts but they?
  • They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:
  • They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.
  • For every wave is wealth to Dædalus,
  • Wealth to the cunning artist who can work
  • This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves!
  • A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?
• • I with my hammer pounding evermore
  • The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust
  • Strewing my bed, and, in another age,
  • Rebuild a continent of better men.
  • Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out
  • The exodus of nations: I disperse
  • Men to all shores that front the hoary main.
• • I too have arts and sorceries;
  • Illusion dwells forever with the wave.
  • I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal
  • With credulous and imaginative man;
  • For, though he scoop my water in his palm,
  • A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.
  • Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore,
  • I make some coast alluring, some lone isle,
  • To distant men, who must go there, or die.