The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 wild star to its track

  On the half-climbed zodiac?

  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 force 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 that expansive reason

  Whose omen ‘t is, and sign.

  Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know

  What rainbows teach, and sunsets show?

  Verdict which accumulates

  From lengthening scroll of human fates,

  Voice of earth to earth returned,

  Prayers of saints 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 fleeing tent,

  Or bow above the tempest bent;

  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,

  Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,

  Plants with worlds the wilderness;

  Waters with tears of ancient sorrow

  Apples of Eden ripe tomorrow.

  House and tenant go to ground,

  Lost in God, in Godhead found.’

  CONCORD HYMN

  SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE

  MONUMENT, JULY 4, 1847

  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, that made those heroes dare

  To die, and leave their children free,

  Bid Time and Nature gently spare

  The shaft we raise to them and thee.

  MAY-DAY

  DAUGHTER of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,

  With sudden passion languishing,

  Teaching barren moors to smile,

  Painting pictures mile on mile,

  Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,

  Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

  The air is full of whistlings bland;

  What was that I heard

  Out of the hazy land?

  Harp of the wind, or song of bird,

  Or vagrant booming of the air,

  Voice of a meteor lost in day?

  Such tidings of the starry sphere

  Can this elastic air convey.

  Or haply ‘t was the cannonade

  Of the pent and darkened lake,

  Cooled by the pendent mountain’s shade,

  Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,

  Afflicted moan, and latest hold

  Even into May the iceberg cold.

  Was it a squirrel’s pettish bark,

  Or clarionet of jay? or hark

  Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,

  Steering north with raucous cry

  Through tracts and provinces of sky,

  Every night alighting down

  In new landscapes of romance,

  Where darkling feed the clamorous clans

  By lonely lakes to men unknown.

  Come the tumult whence it will,

  Voice of sport, or rush of wings,

  It is a sound, it is a token

  That the marble sleep is broken,

  And a change has passed on things.

  When late I walked, in earlier days,

  All was stiff and stark;

  Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,

  In the sky no spark;

  Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,

  Struggling through the drifted roads;

  The whited desert knew me not,

  Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;

  The summer dells, by genius haunted,

  One arctic moon had disenchanted.

  All the sweet secrets therein hid

  By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.

  Eldest mason, Frost, had piled

  Swift cathedrals in the wild;

  The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts

  In the star-lit minster aisled.

  I found no joy: the icy wind

  Might rule the forest to his mind.

  Who would freeze on frozen lakes?

  Back to books and sheltered home,

  And wood-fire flickering on the walls,

  To hear, when, ‘mid our talk and games,

  Without the baffled North-wind calls.

  But soft! a sultry morning breaks;

  The ground-pines wash their rusty green,

  The maple-tops their crimson tint,

  On the soft path each track is seen,

  The girl’s foot leaves its neater print.

  The pebble loosened from the frost

  Asks of the urchin to be tost.

  In flint and marble beats a heart,

  The kind Earth takes her children’s part,

  The green lane is the school-boy’s friend,

  Low leaves his quarrel apprehend,

  The fresh ground loves his top and ball,

  The air rings jocund to his call,

  The brimming brook invites a leap,

  He dives the hollow, climbs the steep.

  The youth sees omens where he goes,

  And speaks all languages the rose,

  The wood-fly mocks with tiny voice

  The far halloo of human voice;

  The perfumed berry on the spray

  Smacks of faint memories far away.

  A subtle chain of countless rings

  The next into the farthest brings,

  And, striving to be man, the worm

  Mounts through all the spires of form.

  The cagèd linnet in the Spring

  Hearkens for the choral glee,

  When his fellows on the wing

  Migrate from the Southern Sea;

  When trellised grapes their flowers unmask,

  And the new-born tendrils twine,

  The old wine darkling in the cask

  Feels the bloom on the living vine,

  And bursts the hoops at hint of Spring:

  And so, perchance, in Adam’s ra
ce,

  Of Eden’s bower some dream-like trace

  Survived the Flight and swam the Flood,

  And wakes the wish in youngest blood

  To tread the forfeit Paradise,

  And feed once more the exile’s eyes;

  And ever when the happy child

  In May beholds the blooming wild,

  And hears in heaven the bluebird sing,

  ‘Onward,’ he cries, ‘your baskets bring,

  In the next field is air more mild,

  And o’er yon hazy crest is Eden’s balmier spring.’

  Not for a regiment’s parade,

  Nor evil laws or rulers made,

  Blue Walden rolls its cannonade,

  But for a lofty sign

  Which the Zodiac threw,

  That the bondage-days are told,

  And waters free as winds shall flow.

  Lo! how all the tribes combine

  To rout the flying foe.

  See, every patriot oak-leaf throws

  His elfin length upon the snows,

  Not idle, since the leaf all day

  Draws to the spot the solar ray,

  Ere sunset quarrying inches down,

  And halfway to the mosses brown;

  While the grass beneath the rime

  Has hints of the propitious time,

  And upward pries and perforates

  Through the cold slab a thousand gates,

  Till green lances peering through

  Bend happy in the welkin blue.

  As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,

  So Spring will not her time forerun,

  Mix polar night with tropic glow,

  Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,

  Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,

  But she has the temperance

  Of the gods, whereof she is one,

  Masks her treasury of heat

  Under east winds crossed with sleet.

  Plants and birds and humble creatures

  Well accept her rule austere;

  Titan-born, to hardy natures

  Cold is genial and dear.

  As Southern wrath to Northern right

  Is but straw to anthracite;

  As in the day of sacrifice,

  When heroes piled the pyre,

  The dismal Massachusetts ice

  Burned more than others’ fire,

  So Spring guards with surface cold

  The garnered heat of ages old.

  Hers to sow the seed of bread,

  That man and all the kinds be fed;

  And, when the sunlight fills the hours,

  Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.

  Beneath the calm, within the light,

  A hid unruly appetite

  Of swifter life, a surer hope,

  Strains every sense to larger scope,

  Impatient to anticipate

  The halting steps of aged Fate.

  Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl:

  When Nature falters, fain would zeal

  Grasp the felloes of her wheel,

  And grasping give the orbs another whirl.

  Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball!

  And sun this frozen side.

  Bring hither back the robin’s call,

  Bring back the tulip’s pride.

  Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?

  The hardy bunting does not chide;

  The blackbirds make the maples ring

  With social cheer and jubilee;

  The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee,

  The robins know the melting snow;

  The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,

  Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,

  Secure the osier yet will hide

  Her callow brood in mantling leaves—

  And thou, by science all undone,

  Why only must thy reason fail

  To see the southing of the sun?

  The world rolls round—mistrust it not—

  Befalls again what once befell;

  All things return, both sphere and mote,

  And I shall hear my bluebird’s note,

  And dream the dream of Auburn dell.

  April cold with dropping rain

  Willows and lilacs brings again,

  The whistle of returning birds,

  And trumpet-lowing of the herds.

  The scarlet maple-keys betray

  What potent blood hath modest May,

  What fiery force the earth renews,

  The wealth of forms, the flush of hues;

  What joy in rosy waves outpoured

  Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.

  Hither rolls the storm of heat;

  I feel its finer billows beat

  Like a sea which me infolds;

  Heat with viewless fingers moulds,

  Swells, and mellows, and matures,

  Paints, and flavors, and allures,

  Bird and brier inly warms,

  Still enriches and transforms,

  Gives the reed and lily length,

  Adds to oak and oxen strength,

  Transforming what it doth infold,

  Life out of death, new out of old,

  Painting fawns’ and leopards’ fells,

  Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells,

  Fires gardens with a joyful blaze

  Of tulips, in the morning’s rays.

  The dead log touched bursts into leaf,

  The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf.

  What god is this imperial Heat,

  Earth’s prime secret, sculpture’s seat?

  Doth it bear hidden in its heart

  Water-line patterns of all art?

  Is it Dædalus? is it Love?

  Or walks in mask almighty Jove,

  And drops from Power’s redundant horn

  All seeds of beauty to be born?

  Where shall we keep the holiday,

  And duly greet the entering May?

  Too strait and low our cottage doors,

  And all unmeet our carpet floors;

  Nor spacious court, nor monarch’s hall,

  Suffice to hold the festival.

  Up and away! where haughty woods

  Front the liberated floods:

  We will climb the broad-backed hills,

  Hear the uproar of their joy;

  We will mark the leaps and gleams

  Of the new-delivered streams,

  And the murmuring rivers of sap

  Mount in the pipes of the trees,

  Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,

  Which for a spike of tender green

  Bartered its powdery cap;

  And the colors of joy in the bird,

  And the love in its carol heard,

  Frog and lizard in holiday coats,

  And turtle brave in his golden spots;

  While cheerful cries of crag and plain

  Reply to-the thunder of river and main.

  As poured the flood of the ancient sea

  Spilling over mountain chains,

  Bending forests as bends the sedge,

  Faster flowing o’er the plains—

  A world-wide wave with a foaming edge

  That rims the running silver sheet—

  So pours the deluge of the heat

  Broad northward o’er the land,

  Painting artless paradises,

  Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,

  Fanning secret fires which glow

  In columbine and clover-blow,

  Climbing the northern zones,

  Where a thousand pallid towns

  Lie like cockles by the main,

  Or tented armies on a plain.

  The million-handed sculptor moulds

  Quaintest bud and blossom folds,

  The million-handed painter pours

  Opal hues and purple dye;

  Azaleas flush the island floors,

  And the tints of heaven reply.

  Wreaths
for the May! for happy Spring

  To-day shall all her dowry bring,

  The love of kind, the joy, the grace,

  Hymen of element and race,

  Knowing well to celebrate

  With song and hue and star and state,

  With tender light and youthful cheer,

  The spousals of the new-born year.

  Spring is strong and virtuous,

  Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,

  Quickening underneath the mould

  Grains beyond the price of gold.

  So deep and large her bounties are,

  That one broad, long midsummer day

  Shall to the planet overpay

  The ravage of a year of war.

  Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,

  And send the nectar round;

  The feet that slid so long on sleet

  Are glad to feel the ground.

  Fill and saturate each kind

  With good according to its mind,

  Fill each kind and saturate

  With good agreeing with its fate,

  And soft perfection of its plan—

  Willow and violet, maiden and man.

  The bitter-sweet, the haunting air

  Creepeth, bloweth everywhere;

  It preys on all, all prey on it,

  Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit,

  Stings the strong with enterprise,

  Makes travellers long for Indian skies,

  And where it comes this courier fleet

  Fans in all hearts expectance sweet,

  As if tomorrow should redeem

  The vanished rose of evening’s dream.

  By houses lies a fresher green,

  On men and maids a ruddier mien,

  As if Time brought a new relay

  Of shining virgins every May,

  And Summer came to ripen maids

  To a beauty that not fades.

  I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,

  Stepping daily onward north

  To greet staid ancient cavaliers

  Filing single in stately train.

  And who, and who are the travellers?

  They were Night and Day, and Day and Night,

  Pilgrims wight with step forthright.

  I saw the Days deformed and low,

  Short and bent by cold and snow;

  The merry Spring threw wreaths on them,

  Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell;

  Many a flower and many a gem,

  They were refreshed by the smell,

  They shook the snow from hats and shoon,

  They put their April raiment on;

  And those eternal forms,

  Unhurt by a thousand storms,

  Shot up to the height of the sky again,

  And danced as merrily as young men.

  I saw them mask their awful glance

  Sidewise meek in gossamer lids;

  And to speak my thought if none forbids

  It was as if the eternal gods,