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Category: Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Each and All

    By Ralph Waldo Emerson

    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,
    Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
    The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
    Deems not that great Napoleon
    Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
    Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
    Nor knowest thou what argument
    Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.
    All are needed by each one;
    Nothing is fair or good alone.
    I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,
    Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
    I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
    He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
    For I did not bring home the river and sky; —
    He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
    The delicate shells lay on the shore;
    The bubbles of the latest wave
    Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
    And the bellowing of the savage sea
    Greeted their safe escape to me.
    I wiped away the weeds and foam,
    I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
    But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
    Had left their beauty on the shore,
    With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
    The lover watched his graceful maid,
    As ‘mid the virgin train she stayed,
    Nor knew her beauty’s best attire
    Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
    At last she came to his hermitage,
    Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; —
    The gay enchantment was undone,
    A gentle wife, but fairy none.
    Then I said, “I covet truth;
    Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat;
    I leave it behind with the games of youth:” —
    As I spoke, beneath my feet
    The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
    Running over the club-moss burrs;
    I inhaled the violet’s breath;
    Around me stood the oaks and firs;
    Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
    Over me soared the eternal sky,
    Full of light and of deity;
    Again I saw, again I heard,
    The rolling river, the morning bird; —
    Beauty through my senses stole;
    I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

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  • Write it on your heart…

     
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Write it on your heart
    that every day is the best day in the year.
    He is rich who owns the day,
    and no one owns the day
    who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
    Finish every day and be done with it.
    You have done what you could.
    Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt, crept in.
    Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a
    new day;
    begin it well and serenely,
    with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
    This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations,
    to waste a moment on the yesterdays…

  • The Snowstorm

     
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
    Arrives the snow, and, driven o’er the fields,
    Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
    Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
    And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
    The sled and traveler 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, nought cares he
    For number or proportion. Mockingly,
    On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
    A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn;
    Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
    Mauger the farmer’s sigh; 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.

     

     

  • The Rhodora: On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?

     
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    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 the sluggish brook.
    The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
    Made the black water with their beauty gay;
    Here might the red-bird 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.

  • My Garden

    By Ralph Waldo Emerson

    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.’

  • Give All To Love

     
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    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 it is a god,
    Knows its own path,
    And the outlets of the sky.

    It was not for the mean;
    It requireth courage stout,
    Souls above doubt,
    Valour 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 endeavour,–
    Keep thee to-day,
    To-morrow, forever,
    Free as an Arab
    Of thy beloved.

    Cling with life to the maid;
    But when the surprise,
    First vague shadow of surmise
    Flits across her bosom young
    Of a joy apart from thee,
    Free be she, fancy-free;
    Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,
    Nor the palest rose she flung
    From her summer diadem.

    Though thou loved her as thyself,
    As a self of purer clay,
    Though her parting dims the day,
    Stealing grace from all alive;
    Heartily know,
    When half-gods go,
    The gods arrive.

     

  • Brahma

     
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    If the red slayer think he slays,
    Or if the slain think he is slain,
    They know not well the subtle ways
    I keep, and pass, and turn again.

    Far or forgot to me is near;
    Shadow and sunlight are the same;
    The vanished gods to me appear;
    And one to me are shame and fame.

    They reckon ill who leave me out;
    When me they fly, I am the wings;
    I am the doubter and the doubt,
    I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.

    The strong gods pine for my abode,
    And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
    But thou, meek lover of the good!
    Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.