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 nun's aspiration.

• • The yesterday doth never smile,
  • The day goes drudging through the while,
  • Yet, in the name of Godhead, I
  • The morrow front, and can defy;
  • Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,
  • Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
  • Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,
  • If He should make my web a blot
  • On life's fair picture of delight,
  • My heart's content would find it right.
  • But O, these waves and leaves,—
  • When happy stoic Nature grieves,
  • No human speech so beautiful
  • As their murmurs mine to lull.
  • On this altar God hath built
  • I lay my vanity and guilt;
  • Nor me can Hope or Passion urge
  • Hearing as now the lofty dirge
  • Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,
  • Nature's funeral high and dim,—
  • Sable pageantry of clouds,
  • Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
  • Many a day shall dawn and die,
  • Many an angel wander by,
  • And passing, light my sunken turf
  • Moist perhaps by ocean surf,
  • Forgotten amid splendid tombs,
  • Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms.
  • On earth I dream;—I die to be:
  • Time, shake not thy bald head at me.
  • I challenge thee to hurry past
  • Or for my turn to fly too fast.
  • Think me not numbed or halt with age,
  • Or cares that earth to earth engage,
  • Caught with love's cord of twisted beams,
  • Or mired by climate's gross extremes.
  • I tire of shams, I rush to be:
  • I pass with yonder comet free,—
  • Pass with the comet into space
  • Which mocks thy æons to embrace;
  • Æons which tardily unfold
  • Realm beyond realm,—extent untold;
  • No early morn, no evening late,—
  • Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate,
  • Whose shining sons, too great for fame,
  • Never heard thy weary name;
  • Nor lives the tragic bard to say
  • How drear the part I held in one,
  • How lame the other limped away.