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.)

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.

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