Home

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.

Copyright information:

The text is in the public domain.

Fair use statement:

This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit.

This volume contains nearly all the pieces included in the Poems and May-Day of former editions. In 1876, Mr. Emerson published a selection from his Poems, adding six new ones, and omitting many.1 Of those omitted, several are now restored, in accordance with the expressed wishes of many readers and lovers of them. Also, some pieces never before published are here given in an Appendix; on various grounds. Some of them appear to have had Mr. Emerson's approval, but to have been withheld because they were unfinished. These it seemed best not to suppress, now that they can never receive their completion. Others, mostly of an early date, remained unpublished doubtless because of their personal and private nature. Some of these seem to have an autobiographic interest sufficient to justify their publication. Others again, often mere fragments, have been admitted as characteristic or as expressing in poetic form thoughts found in the Essays.

iii.

appendix.

the poet.1

i.

- Right upward on the road of fame
- With sounding steps the poet came;
- Born and nourished in miracles,
- His feet were shod with golden bells,
- Or where he stepped the soil did peal
- As if the dust were glass and steel.
- The gallant child where'er he came
- Threw to each fact a tuneful name.
- The things whereon he cast his eyes
- Could not the nations rebaptize,
- Nor Time's snows hide the names he set,
- Nor last posterity forget.
- Yet every scroll whereon he wrote
- In latent fire his secret thought,
- Fell unregarded to the ground,
- Unseen by such as stood around.
- The pious wind took it away,
- The reverent darkness hid the lay.
- Methought like water-haunting birds
- Divers or dippers were his words,
- And idle clowns beside the mere
- At the new vision gape and jeer.
- But when the noisy scorn was past,
- Emerge the wingèd words in haste.
- New-bathed, new-trimmed, on healthy wing,
- Right to the heaven they steer and sing.
- A Brother of the world, his song
- Sounded like a tempest strong
- Which tore from oaks their branches broad,
- And stars from the ecliptic road.
- Times wore he as his clothing-weeds,
- He sowed the sun and moon for seeds.
- As melts the iceberg in the seas,
- As clouds give rain to the eastern breeze,
- As snow-banks thaw in April's beam,
- The solid kingdoms like a dream
- Resist in vain his motive strain,
- They totter now and float amain.
- For the Muse gave special charge
- His learning should be deep and large,
- And his training should not scant
- The deepest lore of wealth or want:
- His flesh should feel, his eyes should read
- Every maxim of dreadful Need;
- In its fulness he should taste
- Life's honeycomb, but not too fast;
- Full fed, but not intoxicated;
- He should be loved; he should be hated
- A blooming child to children dear,
- His heart should palpitate with fear.
- And well he loved to quit his home
- And, Calmuck, in his wagon roam
- To read new landscapes and old skies;—
- But oh, to see his solar eyes
- Like meteors which chose their way
- And rived the dark like a new day!
- Not lazy grazing on all they saw,
- Each chimney-pot and cottage door,
- Farm-gear and village picket-fence,
- But, feeding on magnificence,
- They bounded to the horizon's edge
- And searched with the sun's privilege.
- Landward they reached the mountains old
- Where pastoral tribes their flocks infold,
- Saw rivers run seaward by cities high
- And the seas wash the low-hung sky;
- Saw the endless rack of the firmament
- And the sailing moon where the cloud was rent,
- And through man and woman and sea and star
- Saw the dance of Nature forward and far,
- Through worlds and races and terms and times
- Saw musical order and pairing rhymes.

ii.

- The gods talk in the breath of the woods,
- They talk in the shaken pine,
- And fill the long reach of the old seashore
- With dialogue divine;
- And the poet who overhears
- Some random word they say
- Is the fated man of men
- Whom the ages must obey:
- One who having nectar drank
- Into blissful orgies sank;
- He takes no mark of night or day,
- He cannot go, he cannot stay,
- He would, yet would not, counsel keep,
- But, like a walker in his sleep
- With staring eye that seeth none,
- Ridiculously up and down
- Seeks how he may fitly tell
- The heart-o'erlading miracle.
- Not yet, not yet,
- Impatient friend,—
- A little while attend;
- Not yet I sing: but I must wait,
- My hand upon the silent string,
- Fully until the end.
- I see the coming light,
- I see the scattered gleams,
- Aloft, beneath, on left and right
- The stars' own ether beams;
- These are but seeds of days,
- Not yet a steadfast morn,
- An intermittent blaze,
- An embryo god unborn.
- How all things sparkle,
- The dust is alive,
- To the birth they arrive:
- I snuff the breath of my morning afar,
- I see the pale lustres condense to a star
- The fading colors fix,
- The vanishing are seen,
- And the world that shall be
- Twins the world that has been.
- I know the appointed hour,
- I greet my office well,
- Never faster, never slower
- Revolves the fatal wheel!
- The Fairest enchants me,
- The Mighty commands me,
- Saying, ‘Stand in thy place;
- Up and eastward turn thy face;
- As mountains for the morning wait,
- Coming early, coming late,
- So thou attend the enriching Fate
- Which none can stay, and none accelerate.
- I am neither faint nor weary,
- Fill thy will, O faultless heart!
- Here from youth to age I tarry,—
- Count it flight of bird or dart.
- My heart at the heart of things
- Heeds no longer lapse of time,
- Rushing ages moult their wings,
- Bathing in thy day sublime.
- The sun set, but set not his hope:—
- Stars rose, his faith was earlier up:
- Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
- Deeper and older seemed his eye,
- And matched his sufferance sublime
- The taciturnity of Time.
- Beside his hut and shading oak,
- Thus to himself the poet spoke,
- ‘I have supped to-night with gods,
- I will not go under a wooden roof:
- As I walked among the hills
- In the love which nature fills,
- The great stars did not shine aloof,
- They hurried down from their deep abodes
- And hemmed me in their glittering troop.
- ‘Divine Inviters! I accept
- The courtesy ye have shown and kept
- From ancient ages for the bard,
- To modalate
- With finer fate
- A fortune harsh and hard.
- With aim like yours
- I watch your course,
- Who never break your lawful dance
- By error or intemperance.
- O birds of ether without wings!
- O heavenly ships without a sail!
- O fire of fire! O best of things!
- O mariners who never fail!
- Sail swiftly through your amber vault,
- An animated law, a presence to exalt.’
- Ah, happy if a sun or star
- Could chain the wheel of Fortune's car,
- And give to hold an even state,
- Neither dejected nor elate,
- That haply man upraised might keep
- The height of Fancy's far-eyed steep.
- In vain: the stars are glowing wheels,
- Giddy with motion Nature reels,
- Sun, moon, man, undulate and stream,
- The mountains flow, the solids seem,
- Change acts, reacts; back, forward hurled,
- And pause were palsy to the world.—
- The morn is come: the starry crowds
- Are hid behind the thrice-piled clouds;
- The new day lowers, and equal odds
- Have changed not less the guest of gods;
- Discrowned and timid, thoughtless, worn,
- The child of genius sits forlorn:
- Between two sleeps a short day's stealth,
- ‘Mid many ails a brittle health,
- A cripple of God, half true, half formed,
- And by great sparks Promethean warmed,
- Constrained by impotence to adjourn
- To infinite time his eager turn,
- His lot of action at the urn.
- He by false usage pinned about
- No breath therein, no passage out,
- Cast wishful glances at the stars
- And wishful saw the Ocean stream:—
- Merge me in the brute universe,
- Or lift to a diviner dream!’
- Beside him sat enduring love,
- Upon him noble eyes did rest,
- Which, for the Genius that there strove,
- The follies bore that it invest.
- They spoke not, for their earnest sense
- Outran the craft of eloquence.
- He whom God had thus preferred,—
- To whom sweet angels ministered,
- Saluted him each morn as brother,
- And bragged his virtues to each other,—
- Alas! how were they so beguiled,
- And they so pure? He, foolish child,
- A facile, reckless, wandering will,
- Eager for good, not hating ill,
- Thanked Nature for each stroke she dealt;
- On his tense chords all strokes were felt,
- The good, the bad with equal zeal,
- He asked, he only asked, to feel.
- Timid, self-pleasing, sensitive,
- With Gods, with fools, content to live.
- Bended to fops who bent to him;
- Surface with surfaces did swim.
- ‘Sorrow, sorrow!’ the angels cried,
- ‘Is this dear Nature's manly pride.’
- Call hither thy mortal enemy,
- Make him glad thy fall to see!
- Yon waterflag, yon sighing osier,
- A drop can shake, a breath can fan;
- Maidens laugh and weep; Composure
- Is the pudency of man.'
- Again by night the poet went
- From the lighted halls
- Beneath the darkling firmament
- To the seashore, to the old seawalls,
- Forth paced a star beneath the cloud,
- The constellation glittered soon,—
- ‘You have no lapse; so have ye glowed
- But once in your dominion.
- And yet, dear stars, I know ye shine
- Only by needs and loves of mine,
- Light-loving, light-asking life in me
- Feeds those eternal lamps I see.
- And I to whom your light has spoken.
- I, pining to be one of you,
- I fall, my faith is broken,
- Ye scorn me from your deeps of blue.
- Or if perchance, ye orbs of Fate.
- Your ne'er averted glance
- Beams with a will compassionate
- On sons of time and chance,
- Then clothe these hands with power
- In just proportion.
- Nor plant immense designs
- Where equal means are none.’
- chorus of spirits.
- Means, dear brother, ask them not;
- Soul's desire is means enow,
- Pure content is angel's lot.
- Thine own theatre art thou.
- Gentler far than falls the snow
- In the woodwalks still and low
- Fell the lesson on his heart
- And woke the fear lest angels part.
- poet.
- I see your forms with deep content,
- I know that ye are excellent,
- But will ye stay?
- I hear the rustle of wings,
- Ye meditate what to say
- Ere ye go to quit me for ever and aye.
- spirits.
- Brother, we are no phantom band;
- Brother, accept this fatal hand.
- Aches thine unbelieving heart
- With the fear that we must part?
- See, all we are rooted here
- By one thought to one same sphere;
- From thyself thou canst not flee,—
- From thyself no more can we.
- poet.
- Suns and stars their courses keep,
- But not angels of the deep:
- Day and night their turn observe,
- But the day of day may swerve.
- Is there warrant that the waves
- Of thought in their mysterious caves
- Will heap in me their highest tide,
- In me therewith beatified?
- Unsure the ebb and flood of thought,
- The moon comes back,—the Spirit not.
- spirits.
- Brother, sweeter is the Law
- Than all the grace Love ever saw;
- We are its suppliants. By it, we
- Draw the breath of Eternity;
- Serve thou it not for daily bread,—
- Serve it for pain and fear and need.
- Love it, though it hide its light;
- By love behold the sun at night.
- If the Law should thee forget,
- More enamoured serve it yet;
- Though it hate thee, suffer long;
- Put the Spirit in the wrong;
- Brother, no decrepitude
- Chills the limbs of Time;
- As fleet his feet, his hands as good,
- His vision as sublime:
- On Nature's wheels there is no rust;
- Nor less on man's enchanted dust
- Beauty and Force alight.

fragments on the poet and the poetic gift.1

i.

- There are beggars in Iran and Araby,
- Said was hungrier than all;
- Hafiz said he was a fly
- That came to every festival.
- He came a pilgrim to the Mosque
- On trail of camel and caravan,
- Knew every temple and kiosk
- Out from Mecca to Ispahan;
- Northward he went to the snowy hills,
- At court he sat in the grave Divan.
- His music was the south-wind's sigh,
- His lamp, the maiden's downcast eye,
- And ever the spell of beauty came
- And turned the drowsy world to flame.
- By lake and stream and gleaming hall
- And modest copse and the forest tall,
- Where'er he went, the magic guide
- Kept its place by the poet's side.
- Said melted the days like cups of pearl,
- Served high and low, the lord and the churl,
- Loved harebells nodding on a rock,
- A cabin hung with curling smoke,
- Ring of axe or hum of wheel
- Or gleam which use can paint on steel,
- And huts and tents; nor loved he less
- Stately lords in palaces,
- Princely women hard to please,
- Fenced by form and ceremony,
- Decked by courtly rites and dress
- And etiquette of gentilesse.
- But when the mate of the snow and wind,
- He left each civil scale behind:
- Him wood-gods fed with honey wild
- And of his memory beguiled.
- He loved to watch and wake
- When the wing of the south-wind whipt the lake
- And the glassy surface in ripples brake
- And fled in pretty frowns away
- Like the flitting boreal lights,
- Rippling roses in northern nights,
- Or like the thrill of Æolian strings
- In which the sudden wind-god rings.
- In caves and hollow trees he crept
- And near the wolf and panther slept.
- He came to the green ocean's brim
- And saw the wheeling sea-birds skim.
- Summer and winter, o'er the wave.
- Like creatures of a skiey mould,
- Impassible to heat or cold.
- He stood before the tumbling main
- With joy too tense for sober brain;
- He shared the life of the element,
- The tie of blood and home was rent:
- As if in him the welkin walked,
- The winds took flesh, the mountains talked,
- And he the bard, a crystal soul
- Sphered and concentric with the whole.

ii.

- The Dervish whined to Said,
- “Thou didst not tarry while I prayed.”
- But Saadi answered,
- “Once with manlike love and fear
- I gave thee for an hour my ear,
- I kept the sun and stars at bay,
- And love, for words thy tongue could say.
- I cannot sell my heaven again
- For all that rattles in thy brain.”

iii.

- Said Saadi, “When I stood before
- Hassan the camel-driver's door,
- I scorned the fame of Timour brave;
- Timour, to Hassan, was a slave.
- In every glance of Hassan's eye
- I read great years of victory,
- And I, who cower mean and small
- In the frequent interval
- When wisdom not with me resides,
- Worship Toil's wisdom that abides.
- I shunned his eyes, that faithful man's,
- I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance.”

iv.

- The civil world will much forgive
- To bards who from its maxims live,
- But if, grown bold, the poet dare
- Bend his practice to his prayer
- And following his mighty heart
- Shame the times and live apart,—
- Vœ soils! I found this,
- That of goods I could not miss
- If I fell within the line,
- Once a member, all was mine,
- Houses, banquets, gardens, fountains,
- Fortune's delectable mountains;
- But if I would walk alone,
- Was neither cloak nor crumb my own.
- And thus the high Muse treated me,
- Directly never greeted me,
- But when she spread her dearest spells,
- Feigned to speak to some one else.
- I was free to overhear,
- Or I might at will forbear;
- Yet mark me well, that idle word
- Thus at random overheard
- Was the symphony of spheres,
- And proverb of a thousand years,
- The light wherewith all planets shone,
- The livery all events put on,
- It fell in rain, it grew in grain,
- It put on flesh in friendly form,
- Frowned in my foe and growled in storm,
- It spoke in Tullius Cicero,
- In Milton and in Angelo:
- I travelled and found it at Rome;
- Eastward it filled all Heathendom
- And it lay on my hearth when I came home.

v.

- Mask thy wisdom with delight,
- Toy with the bow, yet hit the white,
- As Jelaleddin old and gray;
- He seemed to bask, to dream and play
- Without remoter hope or fear
- Than still to entertain his ear
- And pass the burning summer-time
- In the palm-grove with a rhyme;
- Heedless that each cunning word
- Tribes and ages overheard:
- Those idle catches told the laws
- Holding Nature to her cause.
- God only knew how Saadi dined;
- Roses he ate, and drank the wind;
- He freelier breathed beside the pine,
- In cities he was low and mean;
- The mountain waters washed him clean
- And by the sea-waves he was strong;
- He heard their medicinal song,
- Asked no physician but the wave,
- No palace but his sea-beat cave.
- Saadi held the Muse in awe,
- She was his mistress and his law;
- A twelvemonth he could silence hold,
- Nor ran to speak till she him told;
- He felt the flame, the fanning wings,
- Nor offered words till they were things,
- Glad when the solid mountain swims
- In music and uplifting hymns.
- Charmed from fagot and from steel,
- Harvests grew upon his tongue,
- Past and future must reveal
- All their heart when Saadi sung;
- Sun and moon must fall amain
- Like sower's seeds into his brain,
- There quickened to be born again.
- The free winds told him what they knew,
- Discoursed of fortune as they blew;
- Omens and signs that filled the air
- To him authentic witness bare;
- The birds brought auguries on their wings,
- And carolled undeceiving things
- Him to beckon, him to warn;
- Well might then the poet scorn
- To learn of scribe or courier
- Things writ in vaster character;
- And on his mind at dawn of day
- Soft shadows of the evening lay.
- Pale genius roves alone,
- No scout can track his way,
- None credits him till he have shown
- His diamonds to the day.
- Not his the feaster's wine,
- Nor land, nor gold, nor power,
- By want and pain God screeneth him
- Till his elected hour.
- Go, speed the stars of thought
- On to their shining goals:—
- The sower scatters broad his seed,
- The wheat thou strew'st be souls.
- A dull uncertain brain,
- But gifted yet to know
- That God has cherubim who go
- Singing an immortal strain,
- Immortal here below.
- I know the mighty bards,
- I listen when they sing,
- And now I know
- The secret store
- Which these explore
- When they with torch of genius pierce
- The tenfold clouds that cover
- The riches of the universe
- From God's adoring lover.
- And if to me it is not given
- To fetch one ingot thence
- Of that unfading gold of Heaven
- His merchants may dispense,
- Yet well I know the royal mine,
- And know the sparkle of its ore,
- Know Heaven's truth from lies that shine,—
- Explored they teach us to explore.
- 1831.
- I grieve that better souls than mine
- Docile read my measured line:
- High destined youths and holy maids
- Hallow these my orchard shades;
- Environ me and me baptize
- With light that streams from gracious eyes.
- I dare not be beloved and known,
- I ungrateful, I alone.
- Ever find me dim regards,
- Love of ladies, love of bards,
- Marked forbearance, compliments,
- Tokens of benevolence.
- What then, can I love myself?
- Fame is profitless as pelf,
- A good in Nature not allowed
- They love me, as I love a cloud
- Sailing falsely in the sphere,
- Hated mist if it come near.
- For thought, and not praise;
- Thought is the wages
- For which I sell days,
- Will gladly sell ages
- And willing grow old
- Deaf and dumb and blind and cold,
- Melting matter into dreams,
- Panoramas which I saw
- And whatever glows or seems
- Into substance, into Law.
- Try the might the Muse affords
- And the balm of thoughtful words
- Bring music to the desolate;
- Hang roses on the stony fate.
- For Fancy's gift
- Can mountains lift;
- The Muse can knit
- What is past, what is done,
- With the web that's just begun;
- Making free with time and size,
- Dwindles here, there magnifies,
- Swells a rain-drop to a tun;
- So to repeat
- No word or feat
- Crowds in a day the sum of ages,
- And blushing Love outwits the sages
- But over all his crowning grace,
- Wherefor thanks God his daily praise.
- Is the purging of his eye
- To see the people of the sky:
- From blue mount and headland dim
- Friendly hands stretch forth to him,
- Him they beckon, him advise
- Of heavenlier prosperities
- And a more excelling grace
- And a truer bosom-glow
- Than the wine-fed feasters know.
- They turn his heart from lovely maids,
- And make the darlings of the earth
- Swainish, coarse and nothing worth:
- Teach him gladly to postpone
- Pleasures to another stage
- Beyond the scope of human age,
- Freely as task at eve undone
- Waits unblamed to-morrow's sun.
- Let me go where'er I will
- I hear a sky-born music still:
- It sounds from all things old,
- It sounds from all things young,
- From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
- Peals out a cheerful song.
- It is not only in the rose,
- It is not only in the bird,
- Not only where the rainbow glows,
- Nor in the song of woman heard,
- But in the darkest, meanest things
- There alway, alway something sings.
- 'T is not in the high stars alone,
- Nor in the cups of budding flowers,
- Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
- Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
- But in the mud and scum of things
- There alway, alway something sings.
- By thoughts I lead
- Bards to say what nations need;
- What imports, what irks and what behooves.
- Framed afar as Fates and Loves.
- Those who lived with him became
- Poets, for the air was fame.
- Shun passion, fold the hands of thrift,
- Sit still and Truth is near:
- Suddenly it will uplift
- Your eyelids to the sphere:
- Wait a little, you shall see
- The portraiture of things to be.
- The rules to men made evident
- By Him who built the day,
- The columns of the firmament
- Not firmer based than they.
- I framed his tongue to music,
- I armed his hand with skill,
- I moulded his face to beauty
- And his heart the throne of Will.
- For every God
- Obeys the hymn, obeys the ode.
- For art, for music over-thrilled,
- The wine-cup shakes, the wine is spilled.
- Hold of the Maker, not the Made;
- Sit with the Cause, or grim or glad.
- That book is good
- Which puts me in a working mood.
- Unless to Thought is added Will,
- Apollo is an imbecile.
- What parts, what gems, what colors shine,—
- Ah, but I miss the grand design.
- Like vaulters in a circus round
- Who leap from horse to horse, but never touch the ground.
- For Genius made his cabin wide,
- And Love led Gods therein to bide.
- The atom displaces all atoms beside,
- And Genius unspheres all souls that abide.
- To transmute crime to wisdom, so to stem
- The vice of Japhet by the thought of Shem.
- Forbore the ant-hill, shunned to tread,
- In mercy, on one little head.
- I have no brothers and no peers,
- And the dearest interferes:
- When I would spend a lonely day,
- Sun and moon are in my way.
- The brook sings on, but sings in vain
- Wanting the echo in my brain.
- On bravely through the sunshine and the showers!
- Time hath his work to do and we have ours.
- He planted where the deluge ploughed,
- His hired hands were wind and cloud;
- His eyes detect the Gods concealed
- In the hummock of the field.
- For what need I of book or priest,
- Or sibyl from the mummied East,
- When every star is Bethlehem star?
- I count as many as there are
- Cinquefoils or violets in the grass,
- So many saints and saviours,
- So many high behaviors
- Salute the bard who is alive
- And only sees what he doth give.
- Thou shalt not try
- To plant thy shrivelled pedantry
- On the shoulders of the sky.
- Ah, not to me those dreams belong!
- A better voice peals through my song.
- Teach me your mood, O patient stars!
- Who climb each night the ancient sky.
- Leaving on space no shade, no scars,
- No trace of age, no fear to die.
- The Muse's hill by Fear is guarded,
- A bolder foot is still rewarded.
- His instant thought a poet spoke,
- And filled the age his fame;
- An inch of ground the lightning strook
- Bat lit the sky with flame.
- If bright the sun, he tarries,
- All day his song is heard;
- And when he goes he carries
- No more baggage than a bird.
- The Asmodean feat is mine,
- To spin my sand-heap into swine.
- Slighted Minerva's learnèd tongue,
- But leaped with joy when on the wind
- The shell of Clio rung.
- Best boon of life is presence of a Muse
- That does not wish to wander, comes by stealth,
- Divulging to the heart she sets on flame
- No popular tale or toy, no cheap renown.
- When the wings grow that draw the gazing eye
- Ofttimes poor Genius fluttering near the earth
- Is wrecked upon the turrets of the town;
- But lifted till he meets the steadfast gales
- Calm blowing from the everlasting West.

fragments on nature and life.

nature.

- Daily the bending skies solicit man,
- The seasons chariot him from this exile,
- The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing wheels,
- The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
- Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
- Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.
- For Nature, true and like in every place,
- Will hint her secret in a garden patch,
- Or in lone corners of a doleful heath,
- As in the Andes watched by fleets at sea,
- Or the sky-piercing horns of Himmaleh;
- And, when I would recall the scenes I dreamed
- On Adirondac steeps, I know
- Small need have I of Turner or Daguerre,
- Assured to find the token once again
- In silver lakes that unexhausted gleam
- And peaceful woods beside my cottage door.
- The patient Pan,
- Drunken with nectar,
- Sleeps or feigns slumber
- Drowsily humming
- Music to the march of time.
- This poor tooting, creaking cricket,
- Pan, half asleep, rolling over
- His great body in the grass,
- Tooting, creaking,
- Feigns to sleep, sleeping never;
- 'T is his manner,
- Well he knows his own affair,
- Piling mountain chains of phlegm
- On the nervous brain of man,
- As he holds down central fires
- Under Alps and Andes cold;
- Haply else we could not live,
- Life would be too wild an ode.
- What all the books of ages paint, I have.
- What prayers and dreams of youthful genius feign,
- I daily dwell in, and am not so blind
- But I can see the elastic tent of day
- Belike has wider hospitality
- Than my few needs exhaust, and bids me read
- The quaint devices on its mornings gay.
- Yet Nature will not be in full possessed,
- And they who truliest love her, heralds are
- And harbingers of a majestic race,
- Who, having more absorbed, more largely field,
- And walk on earth as the sun walks in the sphere.
- But never yet the man was found
- Who could the mystery expound,
- Though Adam, born when oaks were young,
- Endured, the Bible says, as long;
- But when at last the patriarch died
- The Gordian noose was still untied.
- He left, though goodly centuries old,
- Meek Nature's secret still untold.
- Atom from atom yawns as far
- As moon from earth, or star from star.
- The sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin
- To use my land to put his rainbows in.
- For joy and beauty planted it,
- With faerie gardens cheered,
- And boding Fancy haunted it
- With men and women weird.
- What central flowing forces, say,
- Make up thy splendor, matchless day?
- Day by day for her darlings to her much she added more;
- In her hundred-gated Thebes every chamber was a door,
- A door to something grander,—loftier walls, and vaster floor.
- Samson stark at Dagon's knee,
- Gropes for columns strong as he;
- When his ringlets grew and curled,
- Groped for axle of the world.
- She paints with white and red the moors
- To draw the nations out of doors.
- A score of airy miles will smooth
- Rough Monadnoc to a gem.
- The mountain utters the same sense
- Unchanged in its intelligence,
- For ages sheds its walnut leaves,
- One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.
- the earth.
- Our eyeless bark sails free
- Though with boom and spar
- Andes, Alp or Himmalee,
- Strikes never moon or star.
- See yonder leafless trees against the sky,
- How they diffuse themselves into the air,
- And, ever subdividing, separate
- Limbs into branches, branches into twigs,
- As if they loved the element, and hasted
- To dissipate their being into it.
- Parks and ponds are good by day;
- I do not delight
- In black acres of the night,
- Nor my unseasoned step disturbs
- The sleeps of trees or dreams of herbs.
- The low December vault in June be lifted high,
- And largest clouds be flakes of down in that enormous sky.
- Solar insect on the wing
- In the garden murmuring,
- Soothing with thy summer horn
- Swains by winter pinched and worn.
- birds.
- Darlings of children and of bard,
- Perfect kinds by vice unmarred,
- All of worth and beauty set
- Gems in Nature's cabinet;
- These the fables she esteems
- Reality most like to dreams.
- Welcome back, you little nations,
- Far-travelled in the south plantations,
- Bring your music and rhythmic flight,
- Your colors for our eyes' delight:
- Freely nestle in our roof,
- Weave your chamber weatherproof;
- And your enchanting manners bring
- And your autumnal gathering.
- Exchange in conclave general
- Greetings kind to each and all,
- Conscious each of duty done
- And unstainèd as the sun.
- water.
- The water understands
- Civilization well;
- It wets my foot, but prettily
- It chills my life, but wittily,
- It is not disconcerted,
- It is not broken-hearted:
- Well used, it decketh joy,
- Adorneth, doubleth joy:
- Ill used, it will destroy,
- In perfect time and measure
- With a face of golden pleasure
- Elegantly destroy.
- All day the waves assailed the rock,
- I heard no church-bell chime,
- The sea-beat scorns the minster clock
- And breaks the glass of Time.
- sunrise.
- Would you know what joy is hid
- In our green Musketaquid,
- And for travelled eyes what charms
- Draw us to these meadow farms,
- Come and I will show you all
- Makes each day a festival.
- Stand upon this pasture hill,
- Face the eastern star until
- The slow eye of heaven shall show
- The world above, the world below.
- Behold the miracle!
- Thou sawst but now the twilight sad
- And stood beneath the firmament,
- A watchman in a dark gray tent,
- Waiting till God create the earth,—
- Behold the new majestic birth!
- The mottled clouds, like scraps of woof,
- Steeped in the light are beautiful.
- What majestic stillness broods
- Over these colored solitudes.
- Sleeps the vast East in pleasèd peace,
- Up the far mountain walls the streams increase
- Inundating the heaven
- With spouting streams and waves of light
- Which round the floating isles unite:—
- See the world below
- Baptized with the pure element,
- A clear and glorious firmament
- Touched with life by every beam.
- I share the good with every flower,
- I drink the necter of the hour:—
- This is not the ancient earth
- Whereof old chronicles relate
- The tragic tales of crime and fate;
- But rather, like its beads of dew
- And dew-bent violets, fresh and new,
- An exhalation of the time.
- He lives not who can refuse me;
- All my force saith, Come and use me
- A gleam of sun, a little rain,
- And all is green again.
- Seems, though the soft sheen all enchants,
- Cheers the rough crag and mournful dell,
- As if on such stern forms and haunts
- A wintry storm more fitly fell.
- Illusions like the tints of pearl,
- Or changing colors of the sky,
- Or ribbons of a dancing girl
- That mend her beauty to the eye
- The cold gray down upon the quinces lieth
- And the poor spinners weave their webs thereon
- To share the sunshine that so spicy is.
- Put in, drive home the sightless wedges
- And split to flakes the crystal ledges.
- circles.
- Nature centres into balls,
- And her proud ephemerals,
- Fast to surface and outside,
- Scan the profile of the sphere;
- Knew they what that signified,
- A new genesis were here.
- But Nature whistled with all her winds,
- Did as she pleased and went her way.

life.

- A train of gay and clouded days
- Dappled with joy and grief and praise,
- Beauty to fire us, saints to save,
- Escort us to a little grave.
- No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low,
- For God hath writ all dooms magnificent,
- So guilt not traverses his tender will.
- Around the man who seeks a noble end,
- Not angels bat divinities attend.
- From high to higher forces
- The scale of power uprears,
- The heroes on their horses,
- The gods upon their spheres.
- This passing moment is an edifice
- Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild.
- Roomy Eternity
- Casts her schemes rarely,
- And an æon allows
- For each quality and part
- Of the multitudinous
- And many-chambered heart.
- The beggar begs by God's command,
- And gifts awake when givers sleep,
- Swords cannot cut the giving hand
- Nor stab the love that orphans keep.
- Easy to match what others do,
- Perform the feat as well as they;
- Hard to out-do the brave, the true,
- And find a loftier way:
- The school decays, the learning spoils
- Because of the sons of wine;
- How snatch the stripling from their toils?—
- Yet can one ray of truth divine
- The blaze of reveller's feasts outshine.
- In the chamber, on the stais,
- Lurking dumb,
- Go and come
- Lemurs and Lars.
- Of all wit's uses the main one
- Is to live well with who has none.
- The tongue is prone to lose the way,
- Not so the pen, for in a letter
- We have not better things to say,
- But surely say them better.
- She walked in flowers around my field
- As June herself around the sphere.
- Such another peerless queen
- Only could her mirror show.
- I bear in youth the sad infirmities
- That use to undo the limb and sense of age;
- It hath pleased Heaven to break the dream of bliss
- Which lit my onward way with bright presage,
- And my unserviceable limbs forego
- The sweet delight I found in fields and farms,
- On windy hills, whose tops with morning glow,
- And lakes, smooth mirrors of Aurora's charms.
- Yet I think on them in the silent night,
- Still breaks that morn, though dim, to Memory's eye,
- And the firm soul does the pale train defy
- Of grim Disease, that would her peace affright.
- Please God, I'll wrap me in mine innocence
- And bid each awful Muse drive the damned harpies hence.
- - Cambridge,
  1827.
- Be of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly
- Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know,
- God hath a select family of sons
- Now scattered wide thro' earth, and each alone,
- Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one
- By constant service to that inward law,
- Is weaving the sublime proportions
- Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and strength,
- The riches of a spotless memory,
- The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got
- By searching of a clear and loving eye
- That seeth as God seeth. These are their gifts,
- And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on the day
- To seal the marriage of these minds with thine,
- Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be
- The salt of all the elements, world of the world.
- Friends to me are frozen wine;
- I wait the sun on them should shine.
- Day by day returns
- The everlasting sun,
- Replenishing material urns
- With God's unspared donation;
- But the day of day,
- The orb within the mind,
- Creating fair and good alway,
- Shines not as once it shined.
- Vast the realm of Being is,
- In the waste one nook is his;
- Whatsoever hap befalls
- In his vision's narrow walls
- He is here to testify.
- 1831.
- Leave me, Fear, thy throbs are base,
- Trembling for the body's sake:
- Come, Love! who dost the spirit raise
- Because for others thou dost wake.
- O it is beautiful in death
- To hide the shame of human nature's end
- In sweet and wary serving of a friend.
- Love is true glory's field where the last breath
- Expires in troops of honorable cares.
- The wound of Fate the hero cannot feel
- Smit with the heavenlier smart of social zeal.
- It draws immortal day
- In soot and ashes of our clay,
- It is the virtue that enchants it,
- It is the face of God that haunts it.
- 1831.
- Has God on thee conferred
- A bodily presence mean as Paul's,
- Yet made thee hearer of a word
- Which sleepy nations as with trumpet calls?
- O noble heart, accept
- With equal thanks the talent and disgrace;
- The marble town unwept
- Nourish thy virtue in a private place.
- Think not that unattended
- By heavenly powers thou steal'st to Solitude,
- Nor yet on earth all unbefriended.
- 1831.
- You shall not love me for what daily spends;
- You shall not know me in the noisy street,
- Where I, as others, follow petty ends;
- Nor when in fair saloons we chance to meet;
- Nor when I'm jaded, sick, anxious, or mean.
- But love me then and only, when you know
- Me for the channel of the rivers of God
- From deep ideal fontal heavens that flow.
- To and fro the Genius flies,
- A light which plays and hovers
- Over the maiden's head
- And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes.
- Of her faults I take no note,
- Fault and folly are not mine;
- Comes the Genius,—all's forgot,
- Replunged again into that upper sphere
- He scatters wide and wild its lustres here.
- Love
- Asks nought his brother cannot give;
- Asks nothing, but does all receive.
- Love calls not to his aid events;
- He to his wants can well suffice:
- Asks not of others soft consents,
- Nor kind occasion without eyes;
- Nor plots to ope or bolt a gate,
- Nor heeds Condition's iron walls,—
- Where he goes, goes before him Fate;
- Whom he uniteth, God installs;
- Instant and perfect his access
- To the dear object of his thought,
- Though foes and land and seas between
- Himself and his love intervene.
- Go if thou wilt, ambrosial flower,
- Go match thee with thy seeming peers;
- I will wait Heaven's perfect hour
- Through the innumerable years.
- Tell men what they knew before;
- Paint the prospect from their door.
- Him strong Genius urged to roam,
- Stronger Custom brought him home.
- Thou shalt make thy house
- The temple of a nation's vows.
- Spirits of a higher strain
- Who sought thee once shall seek again.
- I detected many a god
- Forth already on the road,
- Ancestors of beauty come
- In thy breast to make a home.
- As the drop feeds its fated flower,
- As finds its Alp the snowy shower,
- Child of the omnific Need,
- Hurled into life to do a deed,
- Man drinks the water, drinks the light.
- Ever the Rock of Ages melts
- Into the mineral air,
- To be the quarry whence to build
- Thought and its mansions fair.
- Yes, sometimes to the sorrow-stricken
- Shall his own sorrow seem impertinent,
- A thing that takes no more root in the world
- Than doth the traveller's shadow on the rock.
- The archangel Hope
- Looks to the azure cope,
- Waits through dark ages for the morn,
- Defeated day by day, but unto victory born.
- But if thou do thy best,
- Without remission, without rest,
- And invite the sun-beam,
- And abhor to feign or seem
- Even to those who thee should love
- And thy behavior approve;
- If thou go in thine own likeness,
- Be it health, or be it sickness;
- If thou go as thy father's son,
- If thou wear no mask or lie,
- Dealing purely and nakedly,—
- From the stores of eldest matter,
- The deep-eyed flame, obedient water,
- Transparent air, all-feeding earth,
- He took the flower of all their worth,
- And, best with best in sweet consent,
- Combined a new temperament.
- Ascending thorough just degrees
- To a consummate holiness,
- As angel blind to trespass done,
- And bleaching all souls like the sun.
- The bard and mystic held me for their own,
- I filled the dream of sad, poetic maids,
- I took the friendly noble by the hand,
- I was the trustee of the hand-cart man,
- The brother of the fisher, porter, swain,
- And these from the crowd's edge well pleased beheld
- The service done to me as done to them.
- With the key of the secret he marches faster,
- From strength to strength, and for night brings day!
- While classes or tribes, too weak to master
- The flowing conditions of life, give way.
- Oh what is Heaven but the fellowship
- Of minds that each can stand against the world
- By its own meek and incorruptible will?
- That each should in his house abide,
- Therefore was the world so wide.
- If curses be the wage of love,
- Hide in thy skies, thou fruitless Jove,
- Not to be named:
- It is clear Why the gods will not appear;
- They are ashamed.
- When wrath and terror changed Jove's regal port,
- And the rash-leaping thunderbolt fell short.

the bohemian hymn.

- In many forms we try
- To utter God's infinity,
- But the boundless hath no form,
- And the Universal Friend
- Doth as far transcend
- An angel as a worm.
- The great Idea baffles wit,
- Language falters under it,
- It leaves the learned in the lurch;
- Nor art, nor power, nor toil can find
- The measure of the eternal Mind,
- Nor hymn, nor prayer, nor church.

prayer.

- When success exalts thy lot
- God for thy virtue lays a plot.
- And all thy life is for thy own,
- Then for mankind's instruction shown;
- And though thy knees were never bent,
- To Heaven thy hourly prayers are sent,
- And whether formed for good or ill
- Are registered and answered still.

grace.

- How much, preventing God, how much I owe
- To the defences thou hast round me set;
- Example, custom, fear, occasion slow,—
- These scorned bondmen were my parapet.
- I dare not peep over this parapet
- To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below,
- The depths of sin to which I had descended,
- Had not these me against myself defended.

eros.

- They put their finger on their lip,
- The Powers above:
- The seas their islands clip,
- The moons in ocean dip,
- They love, but name not love.

written in naples, march 1833.

- We are what we are made; each following day
- Is the Creator of our human mould
- Not less than was the first; the all-wise God
- Gilds a few points in every several life,
- And as each flower upon the fresh hill-side,
- And every colored petal of each flower,
- Is sketched and dyed each with a new design,
- Its spot of purple, and its streak of brown,
- So each man's life shall have its proper lights,
- And a few joys, a few peculiar charms,
- For him round—in the melancholy hours
- And reconcile him to the common days.
- Not many men see beauty in the fogs
- Of close low pine-woods in a river town;
- Yet unto me not morn's magnificence,
- Nor the red rainbow of a summer eve,
- Nor Rome, nor joyful Paris, nor the halls
- Of rich men blazing hospitable light,
- Nor wit, nor eloquence,—no, nor even the song
- Of any woman that is now alive,—
- Hath such a soul, such divine influence,
- Such resurrection of the happy past,
- As is to me when I behold the morn
- Ope in such low moist road-side, and beneath
- Peep the blue violets out of the black loam,
- Pathetic silent poets that sing to me
- Thine elegy, sweet singer, sainted wife.

written at rome, 1833.

- Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too;—
- Besides, you need not be alone; the soul
- Shall have society of its own rank.
- Be great, be true, and all the Scipios,
- The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome
- Shall flock to you and tarry by your side,
- And comfort you with their high company.
- Virtue alone is sweet society,
- It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,
- And opens you a welcome in them all.
- You must be like them if you desire them,
- Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim
- Than wine or sleep or praise;
- Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid,
- And ever in the strife of your own thoughts
- Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome:
- That shall command a senate to your side;
- For there is no might in the universe
- That can contend with love. It reigns forever.
- Wait then, sad friend, wait in majestic peace
- The hour of heaven. Generously trust
- Thy fortune's web to the beneficent hand
- That until now has put his world in fee
- To thee. He watches for thee still. His love
- Broods over thee, and as God lives in heaven,
- However long thou walkest solitary,
- The hour of heaven shall come, the man appear.

peter's field.1

- [Knows he who tills this lonely field
- To reap its scanty corn
- What mystic fruit his acres yield
- At midnight and at morn?]
- That field by spirits bad and good,
- By Hell and Heaven is haunted,
- And every rood in the hemlock wood
- I know is ground enchanted.
- [In the long sunny afternoon
- The plain was full of ghosts,
- I wandered up, I wandered down
- Beset by pensive hosts.]
- For in those lonely grounds the sun
- Shines not as on the town,
- In nearer arcs his journeys run,
- And nearer stoops the moon.
- There in a moment I have seen
- The buried Past arise;
- The fields of Thessaly grew green,
- Old gods forsook the skies.
- I cannot publish in my rhyme
- What pranks the greenwood played;
- It was the Carnival of time,
- And Ages went or stayed.
- To me that spectral nook appeared
- The mustering Day of Doom,
- And round me swarmed in shadowy troop
- Things past and things to come.
- The darkness haunteth me elsewhere;
- There I am full of light;
- In every whispering leaf I hear
- More sense than sages write.
- Underwoods were full of pleasance,
- All to each in kindness bend,
- And every flower made obeisance
- As a man unto his friend.
- Far seen the river glides below
- Tossing one sparkle to the eyes.
- I catch tny meaning, wizard wave;
- The River of my Life replies.

the walk.

- A queen rejoices in her peers,
- And wary Nature knows her own
- By court and city, dale and down,
- And like a lover volunteers,
- And to her son will treasures more
- And more to purpose freely pour
- In one wood walk, than learned men
- Can find with glass in ten times ten

may morning.

- Who saw the hid beginnings
- When Chaos and Order strove,
- Or who can date the morning
- The purple flaming of love?
- I saw the hid beginnings
- When Chaos and Order strove,
- And I can date the morning prime
- And purple flame of love.
- Song breathed from all the forest,
- The total air was fame;
- It seemed the world was all torches
- That suddenly caught the flame.
- Is there never a retroscope mirror
- In the realms and corners of space
- That can give us a glimpse of the battle
- And the soldiers face to face?
- Sit here on the basalt ranges
- Where twisted hills betray
- The seat of the world-old Forces
- Who wrestled here on a day.
- When the purple flame shoots up,
- And Love ascends his throne,
- I cannot hear your songs, O birds,
- For the witchery of my own.
- And every human heart
- Still keeps that golden day
- And rings the bells of jubilee
- On its own First of May.

the miracle.

- I have trod this path a hundred times
- With idle footsteps, crooning rhymes.
- I know each nest and web-worm's tent,
- The fox-hole which the woodchucks rent,
- Maple and oak, the old Divan
- Self-planted twice, like the banian.
- I know not why I came again
- Unless to learn it ten times ten.
- To read the sense the woods impart
- You must bring the throbbing heart.
- Love is aye the counterforce,—
- Terror and Hope and wild Remorse,
- Newest knowledge, fiery thought,
- Or Duty to grand purpose wrought.
- Wandering yester morn the brake,
- I reached this heath beside the lake,
- And oh, the wonder of the power,
- The deeper secret of the hour!
- Nature, the supplement of man,
- His hidden sense interpret can;—
- What friend to friend cannot convey
- Shall the dumb bird instructed say.
- Passing yonder oak, I heard
- Sharp accents of my woodland bird;
- I watched the singer with delight,—
- But mark what changed my joy to fright,—
- When that bird sang, I gave the theme,
- That wood-bird sang my last night's dream,
- A brown wren was the Daniel
- That pierced my trance its drift to tell,
- Knew my quarrel, how and why,
- Published it to lake and sky,
- Told every word and syllable
- In his flippant chirping babble,
- All my wrath and all my shames,
- Nay, God is witness, gave the names.

the waterfall.

- A patch of meadow upland
- Reached by a mile of road,
- Soothed by the voice of waters,
- With birds and flowers bestowed.
- Hither I come for strength
- Which well it can supply,
- For Love draws might from terrene force
- And potencies of sky.
- The tremulous battery Earth
- Responds to the touch of man;
- It thrills to the antipodes,
- From Boston to Japan.

walden.1

- In my garden three ways meet,
- Thrice the spot is blest;
- Hermit thrush comes there to build,
- Carrier doves to nest.
- There broad-armed oaks, the copses' maze,
- The cold sea-wind detain;
- Here sultry Summer over-stays
- When Autumn chills the plain.
- Self-sown my stately garden grows;
- The winds and wind-blown seed,
- Cold April rain and colder snows
- My hedges plant and feed.
- From mountains far and valleys near
- The harvests sown to-day
- Thrive in all weathers without fear,—
- Wild planters, plant away!
- In cities high the careful crowds
- Of woe-worn mortals darkling go,
- But in these sunny solitudes
- My quiet roses blow.
- Methought the sky looked scornful down
- On all was base in man,
- And airy tongues did taunt the town,
- “Achieve our peace who can!”
- What need I holier dew
- Than Walden's haunted wave,
- Distilled from heaven's alembic blue,
- Steeped in each forest cave?
- If Thought unlock her mysteries,
- If Friendship on me smile,
- I walk in marble galleries,
- I talk with kings the while.
- And chiefest thou, whom Genius loved,
- Daughter of sounding seas,
- Whom Nature pampered in these groves
- And lavished all to please,—
- What wealth of mornings in her year,
- What planets in her sky!
- She chose her best thy heart to cheer,
- Thy beauty to supply.
- Now younger pilgrims find the stream,
- The willows and the vine,
- But aye to me the happiest seem
- To draw the dregs of wine.

pan.

- O what are heroes, prophets, men,
- But pipes through which the breath of Pan doth blow
- A momentary music. Being's tide
- Swells hitherward, and myriads of forms
- Live, robed with beauty, painted by the sun;
- Their dust, pervaded by the nerves of God,
- Throbs with an overmastering energy
- Knowing and doing. Ebbs the tide, they lie
- White hollow shells upon the desert shore.
- But not the less the eternal wave rolls on
- To animate new millions, and exhale
- Races and planets, its enchanted foam.

monadnoc from afar.

- Dark flower of Cheshire garden,
- Red evening duly dyes
- Thy sombre head with rosy hues
- To fix far-gazing eyes.
- Well the Planter knew how strongly
- Works thy form on human thought;
- I muse what secret purpose had he
- To draw all fancies to this spot.

the south wind.

- Sudden gusts came full of meaning,
- All too much to him they said,
- Oh, south winds have long memories,
- Of that be none afraid.
- I cannot tell rode listeners
- Half the tell-tale south wind said,—
- 'T would bring the blushes of yon maples
- To a man and to a maid.

fame.

- Ah Fate, cannot a man
- Be wise without a beard?
- East, West, from Beer to Dan,
- Say, was it never heard
- That wisdom might in youth be gotten,
- Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten?
- He pays too high a price
- For knowledge and for fame
- Who sells his sinews to be wise,
- His teeth and bones to buy a name,
- And crawls through life a paralytic
- To earn the praise of bard and critic.
- Were it not better done,
- To dine and sleep through forty years;
- Be loved by few; be feared by none;
- Laugh life away; have wine for tears;
- And take the mortal leap undaunted,
- Content that all we asked was granted?
- But Fate will not permit
- The seed of gods to die,
- Nor suffer sense to win from wit
- Its guerdon in the sky,
- Nor let us hide, whate'er our pleasure,
- The world's light underneath a measure.
- Go then, sad youth, and shine;
- Go, sacrifice to Fame;
- Put youth, joy, health, upon the shrine,
- And life to fan the flame;
- Being for Seeming bravely barter,
- And die to Fame a happy martyr.
- 1824

webster.
from the phi beta kappa poem, 1834.

- Ill fits the abstemious Muse a crown to weave
- For living brows; ill fits them to receive:
- And yet, if virtue abrogate the law,
- One portrait,—fact or fancy—we may draw;
- A form which Nature cast in the heroic mould
- Of them who rescued liberty of old;
- He, when the rising storm of party roared,
- Brought his great forehead to the council board,
- There, while hot heads perplexed with fears the state,
- Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate;
- Seemed, when at last his clarion accents broke,
- As if the conscience of the country spoke.
- Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood,
- Than he to common sense and common good:
- No mimic; from his breast his counsel drew,
- Believed the eloquent was aye the true;
- He bridged the gulf from th' alway good and wise
- To that within the vision of small eyes.
- Self-centred; when he launched the genuine word
- It shook or captivated all who heard,
- Ran from his mouth to mountains and the sea,
- And burned in noble hearts proverb and prophecy.

written in a volume of goethe.

- Six thankful weeks,—and let it be
- A meter of prosperity,—
- In my coat I bore this book,
- And seldom therein could I look,
- For I had too much to think,
- Heaven and earth to eat and drink.
- Is he hapless who can spare
- In his plenty things so rare?

the enchanter.

- In the deep heart of man a poet dwells
- Who all the day of life his summer story tells:
- Scatters on every eye dust of his spells,
- Scent, form and color: to the flowers and shells
- Wins the believing child with wondrous tales;
- Touches a cheek with colors of romance,
- And crowds a history into a glance;
- Gives beauty to the lake and fountain,
- Spies over-sea the fires of the mountain;
- When thrushes ope their throat, 't is he that sings,
- And he that paints the oriole's fiery wings.
- The little Shakspeare in the maiden's heart
- Makes Romeo of a plough-boy on his cart;
- Opens the eye to Virtue's starlike meed
- And gives persuasion to a gentle deed.

philosopher.

- Philosophers are lined with eyes within,
- And, being so, the sage unmakes the man.
- In love, he cannot therefore cease his trade;
- Scarce the first blush has overspread his cheek,
- He feels it, introverts his learned eye
- To catch the unconscious heart in the very act.
- His mother died,—the only friend he had,—
- Some tears escaped, but his philosophy
- Couched like a cat sat watching close behind
- And throttled all his passion. Is't not like
- That devil-spider that devours her mate
- Scarce freed from her embraces?

limits.

- Who knows this or that?
- Hark in the wall to the rat:
- Since the world was, he has gnawed;
- Of his wisdom, of his fraud
- What dost thou know?
- In the wretched little beast
- Is life and heart,
- Child and parent,
- Not without relation
- To fruitful field and sun and moon.
- What art thou? His wicked eye
- Is cruel to thy cruelty.

inscription for a well in memory of the martyrs of the war.

- Fall, stream, from Heaven to bless; return as well;
- So did our sons; Heaven met them as they fell.

the exile.
(after taliessin.)

- The heavy blue chain
- Of the boundless main
- Didst thou, just man, endure.
- I have an arrow that will find its mark,
- A mastiff that will bite without a bark.

[1.]Selected Poems: Little Classic Edition.

[1.]This poem was begun as early as 1831, probably earlier, and received additions for more than twenty years, but was never completed. In its early form, it was entitled, The Discontented Poet, A Masque.

[1.]The poem “Beauty,” the motto for the Essay bearing that name, was originally part of this poem.

[1.]This poem on the memories and associations of the field by the Concord River where Mr. Emerson and his brothers walked in their youth, is probably of earlier date than The Dirge, with which it has two verses in common.

[1.]This poem represents the early form of My Garden, which, in years, grew from this beginning.

Home

The Forum

Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

The Library

Return to Title Page for The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems)

The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

iii.: appendix. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems) [1909]

Edition used:

Part of: The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. (Fireside Edition).

About Liberty Fund:

Copyright information:

Fair use statement:

iii.

appendix.

the poet.1

i.

ii.

fragments on the poet and the poetic gift.1

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

v.

fragments on nature and life.

nature.

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.)

webster.
from the phi beta kappa poem, 1834.

the exile.
(after taliessin.)