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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 Others, mostly of an early date, remained unpublished doubtless because of their personal and private nature.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.

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 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.

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