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.)

quatrains.

• • a. h.
  • High was her heart, and yet was well inclined,
  • Her manners made of bounty well refined;
  • Far capitals and marble courts, her eye still seemed to see,
  • Minstrels and kings and high-born dames, and of the best that be.
• • “suum cuique.”
  • Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
  • Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.
• • hush!
  • Every thought is public,
  • Every nook is wide;
  • Thy gossips spread each whisper,
  • And the gods from side to side.
• • orator.
  • He who has no hands
  • Perforce must use his tongue;
  • Foxes are so cunning
  • Because they are not strong.
• • artist.
  • Qutt the hut, frequent the palace,
  • Reck not what the people say;
  • For still, where'er the trees grow biggest,
  • Huntsmen find the easiest way.
• • poet.
  • Ever the Poet from the land
  • Steers his bark and trims his sail;
  • Bight out to sea his courses stand,
  • New worlds to find in pinnace frail.
• • poet.
  • To clothe the fiery thought
  • In simple words succeeds,
  • For still the craft of genius is
  • To mask a king in weeds.
• • botanist.
  • Go thou to thy learned task,
  • I stay with the flowers of spring;
  • Do thou of the ages ask
  • What me the hours will bring.
• • gardener.
  • True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet,
  • Expound the Vedas of the violet,
  • Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop,
  • See the plum redden, and the beurræ stoop.
• • forester.
  • He took the color of his vest
  • From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast;
  • For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,
  • So walks the woodman, unespied.
• • northman.
  • The gale that wrecked you on the sand.
  • It helped my rowers to row;
  • The storm is my best galley hand
  • And drives me where I go.
• • from alcuin.
  • The sea is the road of the bold,
  • Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,
  • The pit wherein the streams are rolled
  • And fountain of the rains.
• • excelsior.
  • Over his head were the maple buds,
  • And over the tree was the moon,
  • And over the moon were the starry studs
  • That drop from the angels’ shoon.
• • s. h.
  • With beams December planets dart
  • His cold eye truth and conduct scanned,
  • July was in his sunny heart,
  • October in his liberal hand.
• • borrowing.
    from the french.
  • Some of your hurts you have cured,
  • And the sharpest you still have survived,
  • But what torments of grief you endured
  • From evils which never arrived!
• • nature.
  • Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold,
  • And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old:
  • But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,
  • Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
• • fate.
  • Her planted eye to-day controls,
  • Is in the morrow most at home,
  • And sternly calls to being souls
  • That corse her when they come.
• • horoscope.
  • Ere he was born, the stars of fate
  • Plotted to make him rich and great:
  • When from the womb the babe was loosed,
  • The gate of gifts behind him closed.
• • power.
  • Cast the bantling on the rocks,
  • Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat,
  • Wintered with the hawk and fox,
  • Power and speed be hands and feet.
• • climacteric.
  • I am not wiser for my age,
  • Nor skilful by my grief;
  • Life loiters at the book's first page,—
  • Ah! could we turn the leaf.
• • heri, cras, hodie.
  • Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen,
  • To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between:
  • Future or Past no richer secret folds,
  • O friendless Present! than thy bosom holds.
• • memory.
  • Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall
  • Shadows of the thoughts of day,
  • And thy fortunes, as they fall,
  • The bias of the will betray.
• • love.
  • Love on his errand bound to go
  • Can swim the flood and wade through snow,
  • Where way is none, 't will creep and wind
  • And eat through Alps its home to find.
• • sacrifice.
  • Though love repine, and reason chafe,
  • There came a voice without reply,—
  • “T is man's perdition to be safe,
  • When for the truth he ought to die.'
• • pericles.
  • Well and wisely said the Greek,
  • Be thou faithful, but not fond;
  • To the altar's foot thy fellow seek,—
  • The Furies wait beyond.
• • casella.
  • Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
  • For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
  • Never was poet, of late or of yore,
  • Who was not tremulous with love-lore.
• • shakspeare.
  • I See all human wits
  • Are measured hut a few;
  • Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits,
  • Lone as the blessed Jew.
• • hafiz.
  • Her passions the shy violet
  • From Hafiz never hides;
  • Love-longings of the raptured bird
  • The bird to him confides.
• • nature in leasts.
  • As sings the pine-tree in the wind,
  • So sings in the wind a sprig of the pine;
  • Her strength and soul has laughing France
  • Shed in each drop of wine.
• • ΑΔΑΚΡΥΝ ΝΕΜΟΝΤΑΙ ΑΙΩΝΑ.
  • A New commandment,' said the smiling Muse,
  • ‘I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach’;—
  • Lather, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale,
  • And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore
  • Hafiz and Shakspeare with their shining choirs.