Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Poetry; Year 10

Selected Poems
of

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803-1882

1
Music

Let me go where’er I will

I hear a skyborn 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.

’Tis not in the high stars alone,

Nor in the cup of budding flowers,

Nor in the red-breast’s mellow tone,

Nor in the bow that smiles in showers.

But in the mud and scum of things

There alway, alway something sings.

2
We Love the Venerable House
(a hymn)

We love the venerable house

Our fathers built to God;

In heaven are kept their grateful vows,

Their dust endears the sod.

Here holy thoughts a light have shed

From many a radiant face,

And prayers of humble virtue spread

The perfume of the place.

And anxious hearts have pondered here

The mystery of life,

And prayed th’eternal Light to clear

Their doubts and aid their strife.

From humble tenements around

Came up the pensive train,

And in the church a blessing found,

That filled their homes again.

For faith, and peace, and mighty love,

That from the Godhead flow,

Showed them the life of heaven above

Springs from the life below.

They live with God their homes are dust;

Yet here their children pray,

And in this fleeting lifetime trust

To find the narrow way.

3
Success

To laugh often and love much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the approval of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To give of one’s self;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;

To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived …

This is to have succeeded.

4
My Garden

If I could put my woods in song

And tell what’s there enjoyed,

All men would to my gardens throng,

And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,—

Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;

And rank the savage maples grow

From Spring’s faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge

Which older forests bound;

The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,

Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,

Laid the terraces, one by one;

Ebbing later whence it flowed,

They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,—

The wind and the birds which sowed it;

Not for fame, nor by rules of art,

Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side

Play not in Nature’s lawful web,

They heed not moon or solar tide,—

Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,

And every god,—none did refuse;

And be sure at last came Love,

And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable,

As if one spake to another,

In the hemlocks tall, untamable,

And what the whispering grasses smother.

Aeolian harps in the pine

Ring with the song of the Fates;

Infant Bacchus in the vine,—

Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime

Of the wood-bell’s peal and cry,

Write in a book the morning’s prime,

Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods,

Of one import, of varied tone;

They chant the bliss of their abodes

To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound;

But the porches of man’s ear

Seldom in this low life’s round

Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air

And murmurs in the wold

Speak what I cannot declare,

Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,

The whirlwind in ripples wrote

Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,

And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,

Cannot be carried in book or urn;

Go thy ways now, come later back,

On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,

Of better men than live to-day;

If who can read them comes at last

He will spell in the sculpture,‘Stay.’

5
Seashore

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?

Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?

My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,

My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?

Was ever building like my terraces?

Was ever couch magnificent as mine?

Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn

A little hut suffices like a town.

I make your sculptured architecture vain,

Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,

And carve the coastwise mountain into caves.

Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes,

Karnak and Pyramid and Giant’s Stairs

Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab

Older than all thy race.

Behold the Sea,

The opaline, the plentiful and strong,

Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,

Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;

Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,

Purger of earth, and medicine of men;

Creating a sweet climate by my breath,

Washing out harms and griefs from memory,

And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,

Giving a hint of that which changes not.

Rich are the sea-gods:—who gives gifts but they?

They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:

They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.

For every wave is wealth to D’dalus,

Wealth to the cunning artist who can work

This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves!

A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?

I with my hammer pounding evermore

The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust,

Strewing my bed, and, in another age,

Rebuild a continent of better men.

Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out

The exodus of nations: I dispersed

Men to all shores that front the hoary main.

I too have arts and sorceries;

Illusion dwells forever with the wave.

I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal

With credulous and imaginative man;

For, though he scoop my water in his palm,

A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.

Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore,

I make some coast alluring, some lone isle,

To distant men, who must go there, or die.

6
The Bell

I love thy music, mellow bell,

I love thine iron chime,

To life or death, to heaven or hell,

Which calls the sons of Time.

Thy voice upon the deep

The home-bound sea-boy hails,

It charms his cares to sleep,

It cheers him as he sails.

To house of God and heavenly joys

Thy summons called our sires,

And good men thought thy sacred voice

Disarmed the thunder’s fires.

And soon thy music, sad death-bell,

Shall lift its notes once more,

And mix my requiem with the wind

That sweeps my native shore.

7
Concord Hymn

[Sung at the Completion of the
Concord Monument, April 19, 1836]

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world,

The foe long since in silence slept,

Alike the Conqueror silent sleeps,

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone,

That memory may their deed redeem,

When like our sires our sons are gone.

Spirit! who made those freemen dare

To die, or leave their children free,

Bid time and nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and Thee.

8
The Day’s Ration

When I was born,

From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice,

Saying, This be thy portion, child; this chalice,

Less than a lily’s, thou shalt daily draw

From my great arteries; nor less, nor more.

All substances the cunning chemist Time

Melts down into that liquor of my life,

Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty, and disgust,

And whether I am angry or content,

Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt,

All he distils into sidereal wine,

And brims my little cup; heedless, alas!

Of all he sheds how little it will hold,

How much runs over on the desert sands.

If a new muse draw me with splendid ray,

And I uplift myself into her heaven,

The needs of the first sight absorb my blood,

And all the following hours of the day

Drag a ridiculous age.

To-day, when friends approach, and every hour

Brings book or starbright scroll of genius,

The tiny cup will hold not a bead more,

And all the costly liquor runs to waste,

Nor gives the jealous time one diamond drop

So to be husbanded for poorer days.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Why need I galleries, when a pupil’s draught

After the master’s sketch, fills and o’erfills

My apprehension? Why should I roam,

Who cannot circumnavigate the sea

Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn

The nearest matters to another moon?

Why see new men

Who have not understood the old?

9
The Rhodora

On Being Asked Whence Is The Flower

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and sluggish brook.

The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the redbird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for being:

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew:

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

10
The Snow Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The steed and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come, see the north wind’s masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

11
Tact

What boots it, thy virtue,

What profit thy parts,

While one thing thou lackest,

The art of all arts!

The only credentials,

Passport to success,

Opens castle and parlor,—

Address, man, Address.

The maiden in danger

Was saved by the swain,

His stout arm restored her

To Broadway again:

The maid would reward him,—

Gay company come,—

They laugh, she laughs with them,

He is moonstruck and dumb.

This clenches the bargain,

Sails out of the bay,

Gets the vote in the Senate,

Spite of Webster and Clay;

Has for genius no mercy,

For speeches no heed,—

It lurks in the eyebeam,

It leaps to its deed.

Church, tavern, and market,

Bed and board it will sway;

It has no to-morrow,

It ends with to-day.

12
Threnody

[Expresses his grief after losing his five-year-old son, Waldo, to scarlet fever in 1842; threnody means ‘song of mourning.’ Three divisions have been provided if you want to spread this poem over three readings.]

I

The south-wind brings

Life, sunshine, and desire,

And on every mount and meadow

Breathes aromatic fire,

But over the dead he has no power,

The lost, the lost he cannot restore,

And, looking over the hills, I mourn

The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,

I see my trees repair their boughs,

And he, —the wondrous child,

Whose silver warble wild

Outvalued every pulsing sound

Within the air’s cerulean round,

The hyacinthine boy, for whom

Morn well might break, and April bloom,

The gracious boy, who did adorn

The world whereinto he was born,

And by his countenance repay

The favor of the loving Day,

Has disappeared from the Day’s eye;

Far and wide she cannot find him,

My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.

Returned this day the south-wind searches

And finds young pines and budding birches,

But finds not the budding man;

Nature who lost him, cannot remake him;

Fate let him fall, Fate can’t retake him;

Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.

And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,

Oh, whither tend thy feet?

I had the right, few days ago,

Thy steps to watch, thy place to know;

How have I forfeited the right?

Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?

I hearken for thy household cheer,

O eloquent child!

Whose voice, an equal messenger,

Conveyed thy meaning mild.

What though the pains and joys

Whereof it spoke were toys

Fitting his age and ken;—

Yet fairest dames and bearded men,

Who heard the sweet request

So gentle, wise, and grave,

Bended with joy to his behest,

And let the world’s affairs go by,

Awhile to share his cordial game,

Or mend his wicker wagon frame,

Still plotting how their hungry ear

That winsome voice again might hear,

For his lips could well pronounce

Words that were persuasions.

Gentlest guardians marked serene

His early hope, his liberal mien,

Took counsel from his guiding eyes

To make this wisdom earthly wise.

Ah! vainly do these eyes recall

The school-march, each day’s festival,

When every morn my bosom glowed

To watch the convoy on the road;—

The babe in willow wagon closed,

With rolling eyes and face composed,

With children forward and behind,

Like Cupids studiously inclined,

And he, the Chieftain, paced beside,

The centre of the troop allied,

With sunny face of sweet repose,

To guard the babe from fancied foes,

The little Captain innocent

Took the eye with him as he went,

Each village senior paused to scan

And speak the lovely caravan.

II

From the window I look out

To mark thy beautiful parade

Stately marching in cap and coat

To some tune by fairies played;

A music heard by thee alone

To works as noble led thee on.

Now love and pride, alas, in vain,

Up and down their glances strain.

The painted sled stands where it stood,

The kennel by the corded wood,

The gathered sticks to stanch the wall

Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall,

The ominous hole he dug in the sand,

And childhood’s castles built or planned.

His daily haunts I well discern,

The poultry yard, the shed, the barn,

And every inch of garden ground

Paced by the blessed feet around,

From the road-side to the brook;

Whereinto he loved to look.

Step the meek birds where erst they ranged,

The wintry garden lies unchanged,

The brook into the stream runs on,

But the deep-eyed Boy is gone.

On that shaded day,

Dark with more clouds than tempests are,

When thou didst yield thy innocent breath

In bird-like heavings unto death,

Night came, and Nature had not thee,—

I said, we are mates in misery.

The morrow dawned with needless glow,

Each snow-bird chirped, each fowl must crow,

Each tramper started,— but the feet

Of the most beautiful and sweet

Of human youth had left the hill

And garden,—they were bound and still,

There’s not a sparrow or a wren,

There’s not a blade of autumn grain,

Which the four seasons do not tend,

And tides of life and increase lend,

And every chick of every bird,

And weed and rock-moss is preferred.

O ostriches’ forgetfulness!

O loss of larger in the less!

Was there no star that could be sent,

No watcher in the firmament,

No angel from the countless host,

That loiters round the crystal coast,

Could stoop to heal that only child,

Nature’s sweet marvel undefiled,

And keep the blossom of the earth,

Which all her harvests were not worth?

Not mine, I never called thee mine,

But nature’s heir,— if I repine,

And, seeing rashly torn and moved,

Not what I made, but what I loved.

Grow early old with grief that then

Must to the wastes of nature go,—

’Tis because a general hope

Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope

For flattering planets seemed to say,

This child should ills of ages stay,—

By wondrous tongue and guided pen

Bring the flown muses back to men. —

Perchance, not he, but nature ailed,

The world, and not the infant failed,

It was not ripe yet, to sustain

A genius of so fine a strain,

Who gazed upon the sun and moon

As if he came unto his own,

And pregnant with his grander thought,

Brought the old order into doubt.

Awhile his beauty their beauty tried,

They could not feed him, and he died,

And wandered backward as in scorn

To wait an Æon to be born.

Ill day which made this beauty waste;

Plight broken, this high face defaced!

Some went and came about the dead,

And some in books of solace read,

Some to their friends the tidings say,

Some went to write, some went to pray,

One tarried here, there hurried one,

But their heart abode with none.

Covetous death bereaved us all

To aggrandize one funeral.

The eager Fate which carried thee

Took the largest part of me.

For this losing is true dying,

This is lordly man’s down-lying,

This is slow but sure reclining,

Star by star his world resigning.

O child of Paradise!

Boy who made dear his father’s home

In whose deep eyes

Men read the welfare of the times to come;

I am too much bereft;

The world dishonored thou hast left;

O truths and natures costly lie;

O trusted, broken prophecy!

O richest fortune sourly crossed;

Born for the future, to the future lost!

III

The deep Heart answered, Weepest thou?

Worthier cause for passion wild,

If I had not taken the child.

And deemest thou as those who pore

With aged eyes short way before?

Think’st Beauty vanished from the coast

Of matter, and thy darling lost?

Taught he not thee,— the man of eld,

Whose eyes within his eyes beheld

Heaven’s numerous hierarchy span

The mystic gulf from God to man?

To be alone wilt thou begin,

When worlds of lovers hem thee in?

To-morrow, when the masks shall fall

That dizen nature’s carnival,

The pure shall see, by their own will,

Which overflowing love shall fill,—

’Tis not within the force of Fate

The fate-conjoined to separate.

But thou, my votary, weepest thou?

I gave thee sight, where is it now?

I taught thy heart beyond the reach

Of ritual, Bible, or of speech;

Wrote in thy mind’s transparent table

As far as the incommunicable;

Taught thee each private sign to raise

Lit by the supersolar blaze.

Past utterance and past belief,

And past the blasphemy of grief,

The mysteries of nature’s heart,—

And though no muse can these impart,

Throb thine with nature’s throbbing breast,

And all is clear from east to west.

I came to thee as to a friend,

Dearest, to thee I did not send

Tutors, but a joyful eye,

Innocence that matched the sky,

Lovely locks a form of wonder,

Laughter rich as woodland thunder;

That thou might’st entertain apart

The richest flowering of all art;

And, as the great all-loving Day

Through smallest chambers takes its way,

That thou might’st break thy daily bread

With Prophet, Saviour, and head;

That thou might’st cherish for thine own

The riches of sweet Mary’s Son,

Boy-Rabbi, Israel’s Paragon:

And thoughtest thou such guest

Would in thy hall take up his rest?

Would rushing life forget its laws,

Fate’s glowing revolution pause?

High omens ask diviner guess,

Not to be conned to tediousness.

And know, my higher gifts unbind

The zone that girds the incarnate mind,

When the scanty shores are full

With Thought’s perilous whirling pool,

When frail Nature can no more,—

Then the spirit strikes the hour,

My servant Death with solving rite

Pours finite into infinite.

Wilt thou freeze love’s tidal flow,

Whose streams through nature circling go?

Nail the star struggling to its track

On the half-climbed Zodiack?

Light is light which radiates,

Blood is blood which circulates,

Life is life which generates,

And many-seeming life is one,—

Wilt thou transfix and make it none,

Its onward stream too starkly pent

In figure, bone, and lineament?

Wilt thou uncalled interrogate

Talker! the unreplying fate?

Nor see the Genius of the whole

Ascendant in the private soul,

Beckon it when to go and come,

Self-announced its hour of doom.

Fair the soul’s recess and shrine,

Magic-built, to last a season,

Masterpiece of love benign!

Fairer than expansive reason

Whose omen ’tis, and sign.

Wilt thou not ope this heart to know

What rainbows teach and sunsets show,

Verdict which accumulates

From lengthened scroll of human fates,

Voice of earth to earth returned,

Prayers of heart that inly burned;

Saying, what is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent

Hearts are dust, hearts’ loves remain,

Heart’s love will meet thee again.

Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye

Up to His style, and manners of the sky.

Not of adamant and gold

Built He heaven stark and cold,

No, but a nest of bending reeds,

Flowering grass and scented weeds,

Or like a traveller’s fleeting tent,

Or bow above the tempest pent,

Built of tears and sacred flames,

And virtue reaching to its aims;

Built of furtherance and pursuing,

Not of spent deeds, but of doing.

Silent rushes the swift Lord

Through ruined systems still restored,

Broad-sowing, bleak and void to bless,

Plants with worlds the wilderness,

Waters with tears of ancient sorrow

Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow;

House and tenant go to ground,

Lost in God, in Godhead found.

13
To Ellen, At The South

The green grass is growing,

The morning wind is in it,

’Tis a tune worth the knowing,

Though it change every minute.

’Tis a tune of the spring,

Every year plays it over,

To the robin on the wing,

To the pausing lover.

O’er ten thousand thousand acres

Goes light the nimble zephyr,

The flowers, tiny feet of shakers,

Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!

They summon thee, dearest,

Saying; “We have drest for thee the ground,

Nor yet thou appearest.

“O hasten, ’tis our time,

Ere yet the red summer

Scorch our delicate prime,

Loved of bee, the tawny hummer.

“O pride of thy race!

Sad in sooth it were to ours,

If our brief tribe miss thy face,—

We pour New England flowers.

“Fairest! choose the fairest members

Of our lithe society;

June’s glories and September’s

Show our love and piety.

“Thou shalt command us all,

April’s cowslip, summer’s clover

To the gentian in the fall,

Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.

“O come, then, quickly come,

We are budding, we are blowing,

And the wind which we perfume

Sings a tune that’s worth thy knowing.”

14
Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

And marching single in an endless file,

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

To each they offer gifts after his will,

Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleachèd garden, watched the pomp,

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

Turned and departed silent. I, too, late,

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

15
Give All To Love

[Optional; Read along with The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis]

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good fame,

Plans, credit, and the muse;

Nothing refuse.

’Tis a brave master,

Let it have scope,

Follow it utterly,

Hope beyond hope;

High and more high,

It dives into noon,

With wing unspent,

Untold intent;

But ’tis a god,

Knows its own path,

And the outlets of the sky.

’Tis not for the mean,

It requireth courage stout,

Souls above doubt,

Valor unbending;

Such ’twill reward,

They shall return

More than they were,

And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;—

Yet, hear me, yet,

One word more thy heart behoved,

One pulse more of firm endeavor,

Keep thee to-day,

To-morrow, for ever,

Free as an Arab

Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid;

But when the surprise,

Vague shadow of surmise,

Flits across her bosom young

Of a joy apart from thee,

Free be she, fancy-free,

Do not thou detain a hem,

Nor the palest rose she flung

From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,

As a self of purer clay,

Tho’ her parting dims the day,

Stealing grace from all alive,

Heartily know,

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive.

Table of Contents

- 1 Music
- 2 We Love the Venerable House (a hymn)
- 3 Success
- 4 My Garden
- 5 Seashore
- 6 The Bell
- 7 Concord Hymn
- 8 The Day’s Ration
- 9 The Rhodora
- 10 The Snow Storm
- 11 Tact
- 12 Threnody
- 13 To Ellen, At The South
- 14 Days
- 15 Give All To Love