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.)

translations.

• • sonnet of michael angelo buonarotti.
  • Never did sculptor's dream unfold
  • A form which marble doth not hold
  • In its white block; yet it therein shall find
  • Only the hand secure and bold
  • Which still obeys the mind.
  • So hide in thee, thou heavenly dame,
  • The ill I shun, the good I claim;
  • I alas! not well alive,
  • Miss the aim whereto I strive.
• • Not love, nor beauty's pride,
  • Nor Fortune, nor thy coldness, can I chide,
  • If, whilst within thy heart abide
  • Both death and pity, my unequal skill
  • Fails of the life, but draws the death and ill.
• • the exile.
    from the persian of kermani.
  • In Farsistan the violet spreads
  • Its leaves to the rival sky;
  • I ask how far is the Tigris flood,
  • And the vine that grows thereby?
• • Except the amber morning wind,
  • Not one salutes me here;
  • There is no lover in all Bagdat
  • To offer the exile cheer.
• • I know that thou, O morning wind!
  • O'er Kernan's meadow blowest,
  • And thou, heart-warming nightingale!
  • My father's orchard knowest.
• • The merchant hath stuffs of price,
  • And gems from the sea-washed strand,
  • And princes offer me grace
  • To stay in the Syrian land;
• • But what is gold for, but for gifts?
  • And dark, without love, is the day;
  • And all that I see in Bagdat
  • Is the Tigris to float me away.
• • from hafiz.
  • I said to heaven that glowed above,
  • O hide yon sun-filled zone,
  • Hide all the stars you boast;
  • For, in the world of love
  • And estimation true,
  • The heaped-up harvest of the moon
  • Is worth one barley-corn at most,
  • The Pleiads' sheaf but two.
• • If my darling should depart,
  • And search the skies for pronder friends,
  • God forbid my angry heart
  • In other love should seek amends.
• • When the blue horizon's hoop
  • Me a little pinches here,
  • Instant to my grave I stoop,
  • And go find thee in the sphere.
• • epitaph.
  • Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest.
  • Mad Destiny this tender stripling played;
  • For a warm breast of maiden to his breast,
  • She laid a slab of marble on his head.
• • They say, through patience, chalk
  • Becomes a ruby stone;
  • Ah, yes! but by the true heart's blood
  • The chalk is crimson grown.
• • friendship.
  • Thou foolish Hafiz! Say, do churls
  • Know the worth of Oman's pearls?
  • Give the gem which dims the moon
  • To the noblest, or to none.
• • Dearest, where thy shadow falls,
  • Beauty sits and Music calls;
  • Where thy form and favor come,
  • All good creatures have their home.
• • On prince or bride no diamond stone
  • Half so gracious ever shone,
  • As the light of enterprise
  • Beaming from a young man's eyes.
• • from omar khayyam.
  • Each spot where tulips prank their stats
  • Has drunk the life-blood of the great;
  • The violets yon field which stain
  • Are moles of beauties Time hath slain.
• • He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
  • And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
• • On two days it steads not to run from thy grave,
  • The appointed, and the unappointed day;
  • On the first, neither balm nor physician can save,
  • Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.
• • from ibn jemin.
  • Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a mind serene;—
  • A woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned queen;
  • And the second, borrowed money,—though the smiling lender say
  • That he will not demand the debt until the Judgment Day.
• • the flute.
    from hilali.
  • Hark what, now loud, now low, the pining flute complains,
  • Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh;
  • Saying, Sweetheart! the old mystery remains,—
  • If I am I; thou, thou; or thou art I?
• • to the shah.
    from hafiz.
  • Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down,
  • Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear.
• • to the shah.
    from enweri.
  • Not in their houses stand the stars,
  • But o'er the pinnacles of thine!
• • to the shah.
    from enweri.
  • From thy worth and weight the stars gravitate,
  • And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise.
• • song of seyd nimtollah of kuhistan.
    [Among the religious customs of the dervishes is an astronomical dance, in which the dervish imitates the movements of the heavenly bodies, by spinning on his own axis, whilst at the same time he revolves round the Sheikh in the centre, representing the sun; and, a he spins, he sings the Song of Seyd Nimetollah of Kuhistan]
  • Spin the ball! I reel, I burn,
  • Nor head from foot can I discern,
  • Nor my heart from love of mine,
  • Nor the wine-cup from the wine.
  • All my doing, all my leaving,
  • Beaches not to my perceiving;
  • Lost in whirling spheres I rove,
  • And know only that I love.
• • I am seeker of the stone,
  • Living gem of Solomon;
  • From the shore of souls arrived,
  • In the sea of sense I dived;
  • But what is land, or what is wave,
  • To me who only jewels crave?
  • Love is the air-fed fire intense,
  • And my heart the frankincense;
  • As the rich aloes flames, I glow,
  • Yet the censer cannot know.
  • I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing;
  • Stand not, pause not, in my going.
• • Ask not me, as Muftis can,
  • To recite the Alcoran;
  • Well I love the meaning sweet,—
  • I tread the book beneath my feet.
• • Lo! the God's love blazes higher,
  • Till all difference expire.
  • What are Moslems? what are Giaours?
  • All are Love's, and all are ours.
  • I embrace the true believers,
  • But I reck not of deceivers.
  • Firm to Heaven my bosom clings,
  • Heedless of inferior things;
  • Down on earth there, underfoot,
  • What men chatter know I not.

iii.

appendix.