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Contents ( 91)
  1. CONTENTS
  2. From POEMS (1847)
  3. THE RHODORA On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?
  4. THE HUMBLE-BEE
  5. FABLE
  6. ASTRÆA
  7. ETIENNE DE LA BOÉCE
  8. SUUM CUIQUE
  9. COMPENSATION
  10. FORBEARANCE
  11. BERRYING
  12. THINE EYES STILL SHINED
  13. EROS
  14. LOSS AND GAIN
  15. HAMATREYA
  16. EARTH-SONG
  17. THE SNOW-STORM
  18. PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
  19. HOLIDAYS
  20. FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ
  21. GHASELLE from the Persian of Hafiz
  22. XENOPHANES
  23. THE DAY’S RATION
  24. BLIGHT
  25. MUSKETAQUID
  26. HYMN Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836
  27. THE SPHINX
  28. EACH AND ALL
  29. THE PROBLEM
  30. TO RHEA
  31. THE VISIT
  32. URIEL
  33. THE WORLD-SOUL
  34. From MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES (1867)
  35. BRAHMA
  36. NEMESIS
  37. FATE
  38. FREEDOM
  39. ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL Concord, July 4, 1857
  40. BOSTON HYMN Read in Music Hall, January 1, 1863
  41. LOVE AND THOUGHT
  42. LOVER’S PETITION
  43. UNA
  44. LETTERS
  45. RUBIES
  46. MERLIN’S SONG
  47. THE TEST (Musa loquitur)
  48. NATURE
  49. NATURE
  50. THE ROMANY GIRL
  51. MY GARDEN
  52. THE TITMOUSE
  53. DAYS
  54. SEA–SHORE
  55. TWO RIVERS
  56. WALDEINSAMKEIT
  57. TERMINUS
  58. THE PAST
  59. EXPERIENCE
  60. COMPENSATION
  61. CULTURE
  62. POLITICS
  63. HEROISM
  64. CHARACTER
  65. FRIENDSHIP
  66. BEAUTY
  67. MANNERS
  68. ART
  69. SPIRITUAL LAWS
  70. UNITY
  71. WORSHIP
  72. QUATRAINS
  73. From SELECTED POEMS (1876)
  74. THE NUN’S ASPIRATION
  75. CUPIDO
  76. BOSTON Sicut patribus, sit Deus nobis
  77. SILENCE
  78. THE THREE DIMENSIONS
  79. MOTTO TO ‘THE POET’
  80. MOTTO TO ‘GIFTS’
  81. MOTTO TO ‘NATURE’
  82. MOTTO TO ‘NOMINALIST AND REALIST’
  83. MOTTO TO ‘HISTORY’
  84. SOUTH WIND
  85. From THE UNPUBLISHED POEMS
  86. SONG Tune ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled’
  87. LONGER POEMS
  88. WOODNOTES I
  89. MAY-DAY
  90. THE ADIRONDACS A Journal
  91. From The Poet

His cold eye truth and conduct scanned,

July was in his sunny heart,

October in his liberal hand.

A.H.

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,

Minstrels, and kings, and high-born dames, and of the best that be.

‘Suum Cuique’

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?

Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.

Hush!

Every thought is public,

Every nook is wide;

Thy gossips spread each whisper,

And the gods from side to side.

Orator

He who has no hands

Perforce must use his tongue;

Foxes are so cunning

Because they are not strong.

Artist

Quit the hut, frequent the palace,

Reck not what the people say;

For still, where’er the trees grow biggest,

Huntsmen find the easiest way.

Poet

Ever the Poet from the land

Steers his bark, and trims his sail;

Right out to sea his courses stand,

New worlds to find in pinnace frail.

Poet

To clothe the fiery thought

In simple words succeeds,

For still the craft of genius is

To mask a king in weeds.

Botanist

Go thou to thy learned task,

I stay with the flowers of spring:

Do thou of the ages ask

What me the hours will bring.

Gardener

True Bramin, in the morning meadows wet,

Expound the Vedas of the violet,

Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop,

See the plum redden, and the beurré stoop.

Forester

He took the color of his vest

From rabbit’s coat or grouse’s breast;

For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,

So walks the woodman, unespied.

Northman

The gale that wrecked you on the sand,

It helped my rowers to row;

The storm is my best galley hand,

And drives me where I go.

From Alcuin

The sea is the road of the bold,

Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,

The pit wherein the streams are rolled,

And fountain of the rains.

Excelsior

Over his head were the maple buds,

And over the tree was the moon,

And over the moon were the starry studs,

That drop from the angels’ shoon.

Borrowing
From the French

Some of your hurts you have cured,

And the sharpest you still have survived,

But what torments of grief you endured

From evils which never arrived!

Nature

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,

Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

Fate

Her planted eye to-day controls,

Is in the morrow most at home,

And sternly calls to being souls

That curse her when they come.

Horoscope

Ere he was born, the stars of fate

Plotted to make him rich and great:

When from the womb the babe was loosed,

The gate of gifts behind him closed.

Power

Cast the bantling on the rocks,