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.)

song of nature.

• • Mine are the night and morning,
  • The pits of air, the gulf of space,
  • The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
  • The innumerable days.
• • I hide in the solar glory,
  • I am dumb in the pealing song,
  • I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
  • In slumber I am strong.
• • No numbers have counted my tallies,
  • No tribes my house can fill,
  • I sit by the shining Fount of Life
  • And pour the deluge still;
• • And ever by delicate powers
  • Gathering along the centuries
  • From race on race the rarest flowers,
  • My wreath shall nothing miss.
• • And many a thousand summers
  • My gardens ripened well,
  • And light from meliorating stars
  • With firmer glory fell.
• • I wrote the past in characters
  • Of rock and fire the scroll,
  • The building in the coral sea,
  • The planting of the coal.
• • And thefts from satellites and rings
  • And broken stars I drew,
  • And out of spent and aged things
  • I formed the world anew;
• • What time the gods kept carnival,
  • Tricked out in star and flower,
  • And in cramp elf and saurian forms
  • They swathed their too much power.
• • Time and Thought were my surveyors,
  • They laid their courses well,
  • They boiled the sea, and piled the layers
  • Of granite, marl and shell.
• • But he, the man-child glorious,—
  • Where tarries he the while?
  • The rainbow shines his harbinger,
  • The sunset gleams his smile.
• • My boreal lights leap upward,
  • Forthright my planets roll,
  • And still the man-child is not born,
  • The summit of the whole.
• • Must time and tide forever run?
  • Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
  • Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
  • And satellites have rest?
• • Too much of donning and doffing,
  • Too slow the rainbow fades,
  • I weary of my robe of snow,
  • My leaves and my cascades;
• • I tire of globes and races,
  • Too long the game is played;
  • What without him is summer's pomp,
  • Or winter's frozen shade?
• • I travail in pain for him,
  • My creatures travail and wait;
  • His couriers come by squadrons,
  • He comes not to the gate.
• • Twice I have moulded an image,
  • And thrice outstretched my hand,
  • Made one of day and one of night
  • And one of the salt sea-sand.
• • One in a Judæan manger,
  • And one by Avon stream,
  • One over against the mouths of Nile,
  • And one in the Academe.
• • I moulded kings and saviors,
  • And bards o'er kings to rule;—
  • But fell the starry influence short,
  • The cup was never full.
• • Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
  • And mix the bowl again;
  • Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,
  • Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.
• • Let war and trade and creeds and song
  • Blend, ripen race on race,
  • The sunburnt world a man shall breed
  • Of all the zones and countless days.
• • No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
  • My oldest force is good as new,
  • And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
  • Gives back the bending heavens in dew.