Ralph Waldo Emerson

I serve you not, if you I follow, Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow; And bend my fancy to your leading,

A dull uncertain brain, But gifted yet to know That God has cherubim who go

Dear brother, would you know the life, Please God, that I would lead? On the first wheels that quit this weary town

Why fear to die And let thy body lie Under the flowers of June,

High was her heart, and yet was well inclined, Her manners made of bounty well refined; Far capitals and marble courts, her eye still seemed to see,

I, Alphonso, live and learn, Seeing Nature go astern. Things deteriorate in kind;

And when I am entombed in my place, Be it remembered of a single man, He never, though he dearly loved his race,

The April winds are magical And thrill our tuneful frames; The garden walks are passional

Give to barrows, trays and pans Grace and glimmer of romance; Bring the moonlight into noon

Quit the hut, frequent the palace, Reck not what the people say; For still, where'er the trees grow biggest,

Each the herald is who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew In the belly of the grape, Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through,

Be of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know, God hath a select family of sons

Was never form and never face So sweet to SEYD as only grace Which did not slumber like a stone,

'May be true what I had heard,-- Earth's a howling wilderness, Truculent with fraud and force,'

Darlings of children and of bard, Perfect kinds by vice unmarred, All of worth and beauty set

Give me truths; For I am weary of the surfaces, And die of inanition. If I knew

FROM THE FRENCH Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived,

The rocky nook with hilltops three Looked eastward from the farms, And twice each day the flowing sea

READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863 The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came,

Go thou to thy learned task, I stay with the flowers of Spring: Do thou of the Ages ask

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways

In the suburb, in the town, On the railway, in the square, Came a beam of goodness down

Test of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove; Never was poet, of late or of yore,

The sun set, but set not his hope: Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy,

Nature centres into balls, And her proud ephemerals, Fast to surface and outside,

I am not wiser for my age, Nor skilful by my grief; Life loiters at the book's first page,--

The wings of Time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night. Mountain tall and ocean deep

Why should I keep holiday When other men have none? Why but because, when these are gay,

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, JULY 4, 1837 By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Who saw the hid beginnings When Chaos and Order strove, Or who can date the morning.

Can rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await? He must be musical,

The solid, solid universe Is pervious to Love; With bandaged eyes he never errs,

Day by day returns The everlasting sun, Replenishing material urns

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file,

That you are fair or wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous; You must add the untaught strain

CONCORD, 1838 I reached the middle of the mount Up which the incarnate soul must climb,

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

'Mine and yours; Mine, not yours. Earth endures;

Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest Mad Destiny this tender stripling played; For a warm breast of maiden to his breast,

They put their finger on their lip, The Powers above: The seas their islands clip,

The sense of the world is short,-- Long and various the report,-- To love and be beloved;

Over his head were the maple buds, And over the tree was the moon, And over the moon were the starry studs

The lords of life, the lords of life,-- I saw them pass In their own guise,

The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter 'Little Prig;

Ah Fate, cannot a man Be wise without a beard? East, West, from Beer to Dan,

Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great: Unknown to Cromwell as to me

Her planted eye to-day controls, Is in the morrow most at home, And sternly calls to being souls

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?

Long I followed happy guides, I could never reach their sides; Their step is forth, and, ere the day

He took the color of his vest From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast; For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,

A train of gay and clouded days Dappled with joy and grief and praise, Beauty to fire us, saints to save,

The patient Pan, Drunken with nectar, Sleeps or feigns slumber,

Our eyeless bark sails free Though with boom and spar Andes, Alp or Himmalee,

Wisp and meteor nightly falling, But the Stars of God remain.

See yonder leafless trees against the sky, How they diffuse themselves into the air, And, ever subdividing, separate

I There are beggars in Iran and Araby, SAID was hungrier than all;

Once I wished I might rehearse Freedom's paean in my verse, That the slave who caught the strain

Thou foolish Hafiz! Say, do churls Know the worth of Oman's pearls? Give the gem which dims the moon

A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes;

The sea is the road of the bold, Frontier of the wheat-sown plains, The pit wherein the streams are rolled

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere. On two days it steads not to run from thy grave,

I said to heaven that glowed above, O hide yon sun-filled zone, Hide all the stars you boast;

Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a mind serene;-- A woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned queen; And the second, borrowed money,--though the smiling lender say

Each spot where tulips prank their state Has drunk the life-blood of the great; The violets yon field which stain

Ill fits the abstemious Muse a crown to weave For living brows; ill fits them to receive: And yet, if virtue abrogate the law,

True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet, Expound the Vedas of the violet, Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop,

Gifts of one who loved me,-- 'T was high time they came; When he ceased to love me,

Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days,

The cup of life is not so shallow That we have drained the best, That all the wine at once we swallow

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home: Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. Long through thy weary crowds I roam;

How much, preventing God, how much I owe To the defences thou hast round me set; Example, custom, fear, occasion slow,--

'A New commandment,' said the smiling Muse, 'I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach';-- Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale,

Mortal mixed of middle clay, Attempered to the night and day, Interchangeable with things,

Her passions the shy violet From Hafiz never hides; Love-longings of the raptured bird

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, Possessed the land which rendered to their toil Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.

Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen, To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between: Future or Past no richer secret folds,

On a mound an Arab lay, And sung his sweet regrets And told his amulets:

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons;

From fall to spring, the russet acorn, Fruit beloved of maid and boy, Lent itself beneath the forest,

Ere he was born, the stars of fate Plotted to make him rich and great: When from the womb the babe was loosed,

Every thought is public, Every nook is wide; Thy gossips spread each whisper,

There is in all the sons of men A love that in the spirit dwells, That panteth after things unseen,

SUNG AT THE SECOND CHURCH, AT THE ORDINATION OF REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS We love the venerable house Our fathers built to God;--

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

Flow, flow the waves hated, Accursed, adored, The waves of mutation;

I mourn upon this battle-field, But not for those who perished here. Behold the river-bank

I. THE INITIAL LOVE Venus, when her son was lost, Cried him up and down the coast,

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

Power that by obedience grows, Knowledge which its source not knows, Wave which severs whom it bears

Gravely it broods apart on joy, And, truth to tell, amused by pain.

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals;-- The sower scatters broad his seed;

Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear.

Who knows this or that? Hark in the wall to the rat: Since the world was, he has gnawed;

Tell me, maiden, dost thou use Thyself thro' Nature to diffuse? All the angles of the coast

Love scatters oil On Life's dark sea, Sweetens its toil--

Love on his errand bound to go Can swim the flood and wade through snow, Where way is none, 't will creep and wind

Two well-assorted travellers use The highway, Eros and the Muse. From the twins is nothing hidden,

Illusion works impenetrable, Weaving webs innumerable, Her gay pictures never fail,

Soft and softlier hold me, friends! Thanks if your genial care Unbind and give me to the air.

Grace, Beauty and Caprice Build this golden portal; Graceful women, chosen men,

Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Teaching Barren moors to smile,

Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as they fall,

Thy trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,

The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs; Balance-loving Nature

I Of Merlin wise I learned a song,-- Sing it low or sing it loud,

What care I, so they stand the same,-- Things of the heavenly mind,-- How long the power to give them name

I cannot spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; From the earth-poles to the Line,

Thousand minstrels woke within me, 'Our music's in the hills;'-- Gayest pictures rose to win me,

Dark flower of Cheshire garden, Red evening duly dyes Thy sombre head with rosy hues

Let me go where'er I will, I hear a sky-born music still: It sounds from all things old,

Because I was content with these poor fields, Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, And found a home in haunts which others scorned,

If I could put my woods in song And tell what's there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng,

All day the waves assailed the rock, I heard no church-bell chime, The sea-beat scorns the minster clock

I A subtle chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings;

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold, And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old: But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,

Winters know Easily to shed the snow, And the untaught Spring is wise

She is gamesome and good, But of mutable mood,-- No dreary repeater now and again,

As sings the pine-tree in the wind, So sings in the wind a sprig of the pine; Her strength and soul has laughing France

Already blushes on thy cheek The bosom thought which thou must speak; The bird, how far it haply roam

I left my dreary page and sallied forth, Received the fair inscriptions of the night; The moon was making amber of the world,

The gale that wrecked you on the sand, It helped my rowers to row; The storm is my best galley hand

October woods wherein The boy's dream comes to pass, And Nature squanders on the boy her pomp,

Though loath to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave

O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven,

Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,-- Too credulous lover

He who has no hands Perforce must use his tongue; Foxes are so cunning

O what are heroes, prophets, men, But pipes through which the breath of Pan doth blow A momentary music. Being's tide

Well and wisely said the Greek, Be thou faithful, but not fond; To the altar's foot thy fellow seek,--

[Knows he who tills this lonely field To reap its scanty corn, What mystic fruit his acres yield

Philosophers are lined with eyes within, And, being so, the sage unmakes the man. In love, he cannot therefore cease his trade;

Ever the Poet from the land Steers his bark and trims his sail; Right out to sea his courses stand,

To clothe the fiery thought In simple words succeeds, For still the craft of genius is

Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food

Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, Wintered with the hawk and fox,

His tongue was framed to music, And his hand was armed with skill; His face was the mould of beauty,

When success exalts thy lot, God for thy virtue lays a plot: And all thy life is for thy own,

In countless upward-striving waves The moon-drawn tide-wave strives; In thousand far-transplanted grafts

Theme no poet gladly sung, Fair to old and foul to young; Scorn not thou the love of parts,

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,

Have ye seen the caterpillar Foully warking in his nest? 'T is the poor man getting siller,

They brought me rubies from the mine, And held them to the sun; I said, they are drops of frozen wine

With beams December planets dart His cold eye truth and conduct scanned, July was in his sunny heart,

Trees in groves, Kine in droves, In ocean sport the scaly herds,

Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,-- ''T is man's perdition to be safe,

I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come? Am I not always here, thy summer home?

Though her eye seek other forms And a glad delight below, Yet the love the world that warms

Henceforth, please God, forever I forego The yoke of men's opinions. I will be Light-hearted as a bird, and live with God.

In the turbulent beauty Of a gusty Autumn day, Poet on a sunny headland

I see all human wits Are measured but a few; Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits,

I am the Muse who sung alway By Jove, at dawn of the first day. Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought

Mine are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,

Among the religious customs of the dervishes is an astronomical dance, in which the dervish imitates the movements of the heavenly bodies, by spinning on his own axis, whilst at the same time he revolves round the Sheikh in the centre, representing the sun; and, as he spins, he sings the Song of Seyd Nimetollah of Kuhistan. Spin the ball! I reel, I burn, Nor head from foot can I discern,

Never did sculptor's dream unfold A form which marble doth not hold In its white block; yet it therein shall find

The living Heaven thy prayers respect, House at once and architect, Quarrying man's rejected hours,

Would you know what joy is hid In our green Musketaquid, And for travelled eyes what charms

Seek not the spirit, if it hide Inexorable to thy zeal: Trembler, do not whine and chide:

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill. If curses be the wage of love,

It is time to be old, To take in sail:-- The god of bounds,

A JOURNAL DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858 Wise and polite,--and if I drew

Your picture smiles as first it smiled; The ring you gave is still the same; Your letter tells, O changing child!

Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood

I love thy music, mellow bell, I love thine iron chime, To life or death, to heaven or hell,

In many forms we try To utter God's infinity, But the boundless hath no form,

Day! hast thou two faces, Making one place two places? One, by humble farmer seen,

When I was born, From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice, Saying, 'This be thy portion, child; this chalice,

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,

FROM THE PERSIAN OF KERMANI In Farsistan the violet spreads Its leaves to the rival sky;

(AFTER TALIESSIN) The heavy blue chain Of the boundless main

FROM HILALI Hark, what, now loud, now low, the pining flute complains, Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh;

Many things the garden shows, And pleased I stray From tree to tree

One musician is sure, His wisdom will not fail, He has not tasted wine impure,

There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select

Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique,

I There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all:

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 Farewell, ye lofty spires That cheered the holy light!

The little needle always knows the North, The little bird remembereth his note, And this wise Seer within me never errs.

I have trod this path a hundred times With idle footsteps, crooning rhymes. I know each nest and web-worm's tent,

The yesterday doth never smile, The day goes drudging through the while, Yet, in the name of Godhead, I

The prosperous and beautiful To me seem not to wear The yoke of conscience masterful,

The debt is paid, The verdict said, The Furies laid,

I Right upward on the road of fame With sounding steps the poet came;

I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

And I behold once more My old familiar haunts; here the blue river, The same blue wonder that my infant eye

The sun goes down, and with him takes The coarseness of my poor attire; The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy,

A sterner errand to the silken troop Has quenched the uneasy blush that warmed my cheek; I am commissioned in my day of joy

(Musa loquitur.) I hung my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may find.

You shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, As late I found my lukewarm blood

BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER Why lingerest thou, pale violet, to see the dying year; Are Autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to hear;

Askest, 'How long thou shalt stay?' Devastator of the day! Know, each substance and relation,

A Queen rejoices in her peers, And wary Nature knows her own By court and city, dale and down,

A patch of meadow upland Reached by a mile of road, Soothed by the voice of waters,

Thanks to the morning light, Thanks to the foaming sea, To the uplands of New Hampshire,

Thine eyes still shined for me, though far I lonely roved the land or sea: As I behold yon evening star,

I am not poor, but I am proud, Of one inalienable right, Above the envy of the crowd,--

The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow

And Ellen, when the graybeard years Have brought us to life's evening hour, And all the crowded Past appears

The green grass is bowing, The morning wind is in it; 'T is a tune worth thy knowing,

O fair and stately maid, whose eyes Were kindled in the upper skies At the same torch that lighted mine;

Set not thy foot on graves; Hear what wine and roses say; The mountain chase, the summer waves,

Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes, Not with flatteries, but truths, Which tarnish not, but purify

From thy worth and weight the stars gravitate, And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise.

Not in their houses stand the stars, But o'er the pinnacles of thine!

Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down, Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear.

I rake no coffined clay, nor publish wide The resurrection of departed pride. Safe in their ancient crannies, dark and deep,

Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit

Roving, roving, as it seems, Una lights my clouded dreams; Still for journeys she is dressed;

Space is ample, east and west, But two cannot go abreast, Cannot travel in it two:

It fell in the ancient periods Which the brooding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself

Vast the realm of Being is, In the waste one nook is his; Whatsoever hap befalls

I Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me;

I do not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend,

In my garden three ways meet, Thrice the spot is blest; Hermit-thrush comes there to build,

The water understands Civilization well; It wets my foot, but prettily

Who shall tell what did befall, Far away in time, when once, Over the lifeless ball,

Let Webster's lofty face Ever on thousands shine, A beacon set that Freedom's race

1 When the pine tosses its cones To the song of its waterfall tones,

As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace, So waved the pine-tree through my thought

This is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows: He to captivity was sold,

Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too;-- Besides, you need not be alone; the soul Shall have society of its own rank.

Six thankful weeks,--and let it be A meter of prosperity,-- In my coat I bore this book,

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

By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,