Emerson
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This selection by Peter Washington first published in
Everyman’s Library, 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Everyman’s Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Published in the United Kingdom by Everyman’s Library, Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT. Distributed by Random House (UK) Ltd.
US website: www.randomhouse.com/everymans
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
[Poems. Selections]
Emerson : poems / edited by Peter Washington.
p. cm.—(Everyman’s library pocket poets)
eISBN: 978-0-307-82362-5
I. Washington, Peter. II. Title. III. Series.
PS1624.A1 2004
2004046913
811′.3—dc22
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
From POEMS (1847)
The Rhodora
The Humble-Bee
Fable
Astræa
Etienne de la Boéce
Suum Cuique
Compensation
Forbearance
Berrying
Thine Eyes Still Shined
Eros
Loss and Gain
Hamatreya
The Snow-Storm
Painting and Sculpture
Holidays
From the Persian of Hafiz
Ghaselle
Xenophanes
The Day’s Ration
Blight
Musketaquid
Hymn (‘By the rude bridge that arched the flood’)
The Sphinx
Each and All
The Problem
To Rhea
The Visit
Uriel
The World-Soul
From MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES (1867)
Brahma
Nemesis
Fate
Freedom
Ode Sung in the Town Hall
Boston Hymn
Love and Thought
Lover’s Petition
Una
Letters
Rubies
Merlin’s Song
The Test
Nature I
Nature II
The Romany Girl
My Garden
The Titmouse
Days
Sea-Shore
Two Rivers
Waldeinsamkeit
Terminus
The Past
Experience
Compensation
Culture
Politics
Heroism
Character
Friendship
Beauty
Manners
Art
Spiritual Laws
Unity
Worship
Quatrains
From SELECTED POEMS (1876)
The Nun’s Aspiration
Hymn (‘We love the venerable house’)
Cupido
Boston
Silence
The Three Dimensions
Motto to ‘The Poet’
Motto to ‘Gifts’
Motto to ‘Nature’
Motto to ‘Nominalist and Realist’
Motto to ‘History’
South Wind
From THE UNPUBLISHED POEMS
‘William does thy frigid soul’
‘Perhaps thy lot in life is higher’
Song
‘I spread my gorgeous sail’
‘O what is Heaven but the fellowship’
‘Ah strange strange strange’
‘See yonder leafless trees against the sky’
‘Do that which you can do’
‘Few are free’
Van Buren
The Future
Rex
‘And when I am entombed in my place’
‘Bard or dunce is blest, but hard’
‘It takes philosopher or fool’
‘Tell men what they knew before’
‘I use the knife’
‘There is no evil but can speak’
‘The sea reflects the rosy sky’
‘In this sour world, O summerwind’
‘Look danger in the eye it vanishes’
‘As I walked in the wood’
‘I sat upon the ground’
‘Good Charles the spring’s adorer’
‘Around the man who seeks a noble end’
‘In the deep heart of man a poet dwells’
‘O what are heroes prophets men’
‘Yet sometime to the sorrow stricken’
The Bohemian Hymn
‘Kind & holy were the words’
‘Divine Inviters! I accept’
‘Go if thou wilt ambrosial Flower’
‘In Walden wood the chickadee’
‘Star seer Copernicus’
‘At last the poet spoke’
‘I grieve that better souls than mine’
Nantasket
Water
‘Where the fungus broad & red’
‘From the stores of eldest Matter’
‘And the best gift of God’
‘Stout Sparta shrined the god of Laughter’
‘Brother, no decrepitude’
‘Who knows this or that’
‘Saadi loved the new & old’
‘And as the light divided the dark’
‘When devils bite’
‘Comfort with a purring cat’
‘I cannot find a place so lonely’
‘This shining hour is an edifice’
‘The sparrow is rich in her nest’
‘Bended to fops who bent to him’
Elizabeth Hoar
‘Cloud upon cloud’
‘Since the devil hopping on’
‘Poets are colorpots’
‘Thanks to those who go & come’
‘I must not borrow light’
‘Comrade of the snow & wind’
‘God only knew how Saadi dined’
‘Friends to me are frozen wine’
‘That each should in his house abide’
New England Capitalist
‘On a raisin stone’
‘Go out into Nature and plant trees’
‘Pale Genius roves alone’
‘Burn your literary verses’
‘Intellect gravely broods apart on joy’
‘The civil world will much forgive’
‘Mask thy wisdom with delight’
‘Roomy Eternity’
Terminus
‘More sweet than my refrain’
‘O Boston city lecture-hearing’
‘A patch of meadow & upland’
‘And he like me is not too proud’
‘Park & ponds are good by day’
‘For Lyra yet shall be the pole’
‘A score of airy miles will smooth’
‘All things rehearse’
‘Pedants all’
‘I leave the book, I leave the wine’
‘Easy to match what others do’
‘If wishes would carry me over the land’
Maia
‘Seyd planted where the deluge ploughed’
‘Forbore the ant hill, shunned to tread’
‘Borrow Urania’s subtile wings’
‘The comrade or the book is good’
‘Is the pace of nature slow?’
‘Why honor the new men’
‘Think not the gods receive thy prayer’
‘Inspired we must forget our books’
‘Upon a rock yet uncreate’
LONGER POEMS
Woodnotes I
May-Day
The Adirondacs
From The Poet
From
POEMS (1847)
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 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.
THE HUMBLE-BEE
Burly, dozing, humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.
Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of thy dominion!
Sailor of the atmosphere;
Swimmer through the waves of air;
Voyager of light and noon;
Epicurean of June;
Wait, I prithee, till I come
Within earshot of thy hum, –
All without is martyrdom.
When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shining haze
Silvers the horizon wall,
And, with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
And, infusing subtle heats,
Turns the sod to violets,
Thou, in sunny solitudes,
Rover of the underwoods,
The green silence dost displace
With thy mellow, breezy bass.
Hot midsummer’s petted crone,
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone
Tells of countless sunny hours,
Long days, and solid banks of flowers;
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound
In Indian wildernesses found;
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.
Aught unsavory or unclean
Hath my insect never seen;
But violets and bilberry bells,
Maple-sap, and daffodels,
Grass with green flag half-mast high,
Succory to match the sky,
Columbine with horn of honey,
Scented fern, and agrimony,
Clover, catchfly, adder’s tongue,
And brier roses, dwelt among;
All beside was unknown waste,
All was picture as he passed.
Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
When the fierce north-western blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep;
Woe and want thou canst outsleep;
Want and woe, which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.
FABLE
The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter ‘Little Prig.’
Bun replied,
‘You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I’m not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I’ll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.’
ASTRÆA
Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero’s rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.
I saw men go up and down,
In the country and the town,
With this prayer upon their neck, –
‘Judgment and a judge we seek.’
Not to monarchs they repair,
Nor to learned jurist’s chair;
But they hurry to their peers,
To their kinsfolk and their dears;
Louder than with speech they pray, –
‘What am I? companion, say.’
And the friend not hesitates
To assign just place and mates;
Answers not in word or letter,
Yet is understood the better;
Is to his friend a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets
What himself declared repeats,
What himself confessed records,
Sentences him in his words;
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm.
Yet shine forever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o’er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state;
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge
To those who gaze from the sea’s edge.
It is there for benefit;
It is there for purging light;
There for purifying storms;
And its depths reflect all forms;
It cannot parley with the mean, –
Pure by impure is not seen.
For there’s no sequestered grot,
Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
Daily stoops to harbor there.
ETIENNE DE LA BOÉCE
I serve you not, if you I follow,
Shadowlike, o’er hill and hollow;
And bend my fancy to your leading,
All too nimble for my treading.
When the pilgrimage is done,
And we’ve the landscape overrun,
I am bitter, vacant, thwarted,
And your heart is unsupported.
Vainly valiant, you have missed
The manhood that should yours resist, –
Its complement; but if I could,
In severe or cordial mood,
Lead you rightly to my altar,
Where the wisest Muses falter,
And worship that world-warming spark
Which dazzles me in midnight dark,
Equalizing small and large,
While the soul it doth surcharge,
That the poor is wealthy grown,
And the hermit never alone, –
The traveller and the road seem one
With the errand to be done, –
That were a man’s and lover’s part,
That were Freedom’s whitest chart.
SUUM CUIQUE
The rain has spoiled the farmer’s day;
Shall sorrow put my books away?
Thereby are two days lost:
Nature shall mind her own affairs;
I will attend my proper cares,
In rain, or sun, or frost.
COMPENSATION
Why should I keep holiday
When other men have none?
Why but because, when these are gay,
I sit and mourn alone?
And why, when mirth unseals all tongues,
Should mine alone be dumb?
Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,
And now their hour is come.
FORBEARANCE
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?
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
And loved so well a high behavior,
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?
O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
BERRYING
‘May be true what I had heard, –
Earth’s a howling wilderness,
Truculent with fraud and force,’
Said I, strolling through the pastures,
And along the river-side.
Caught among the blackberry vines,
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet,
Pleasant fancies overtook me.
I said, ‘What influence me preferred,
Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?’
The vines replied, ‘And didst thou deem
No wisdom to our berries went?’
THINE EYES STILL SHINED
Thine eyes still shined for me, though far
I lonely roved the land or sea:
As I behold yon evening star,
Which yet beholds not me.
This morn I climbed the misty hill,
And roamed the pastures through;
How danced thy form before my path
Amidst the deep-eyed dew!
When the redbird spread his sable wing,
And showed his side of flame;
When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
In both I read thy name.
EROS
The sense of the world is short, –
Long and various the report, –
To love and be beloved;
Men and gods have not outlearned it;
And, how oft soe’er they’ve turned it,
’Tis not to be improved.
LOSS AND GAIN
Virtue runs before the Muse,
And defies her skill;
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter’s will.
Star-adoring, occupied,
Virtue cannot bend her
Just to please a poet’s pride,
To parade her splendor.
The bard must be with good intent
No more his, but hers;
Must throw away his pen and paint,
Kneel with worshippers.
Then, perchance, a sunny ray
From the heaven of fire,
His lost tools may overpay,
And better his desire.
HAMATREYA
Minott, Lee, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, ‘ ’Tis mine, my children’s, and my name’s:
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.’
Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds;
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain.
‘This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well, – lies fairly to the south.
’Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.’
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says: –
EARTH-SONG
‘Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide –
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.
‘The lawyer’s deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.
‘Here is the land,