Poems pdf Ralph Waldo Emerson Free Download

These are their gifts,

And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on the day

To seal the marriage of these minds with thine,

Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be

The salt of all the elements, world of the world.

FRIENDS to me are frozen wine;

I wait the sun on them should shine.

DAY by day returns

The everlasting sun,

Replenishing material urns

With God's unspared donation;

But the day of day,

The orb within the mind,

Creating fair and good alway,

Shines not as once it shined.

Vast the realm of Being is,

In the waste one nook is his;

Whatsoever hap befalls

In his vision's narrow walls

He is here to testify.

1831.

LEAVE me, Fear, thy throbs are base,

Trembling for the body's sake:

Come, Love! who dost the spirit raise

Because for others thou dost wake.

O it is beautiful in death

To hide the shame of human nature's end

In sweet and wary serving of a friend.

Love is true glory's field where the last breath

Expires in troops of honorable cares.

The wound of Fate the hero cannot feel

Smit with the heavenlier smart of social zeal.

It draws immortal day

In soot and ashes of our clay,

It is the virtue that enchants it,

It is the face of God that haunts it.

1831.

HAS God on thee conferred

A bodily presence mean as Paul's,

Yet made thee hearer of a word

Which sleepy nations as with trumpet calls?

O noble heart, accept

With equal thanks the talent and disgrace;

The marble town unwept

Nourish thy virtue in a private place.

Think not that unattended

By heavenly powers thou steal'st to Solitude,

Nor yet on earth all unbefriended.

1831.

YOU shall not love me for what daily spends;

You shall not know me in the noisy street,

Where I, as others, follow petty ends;

Nor when in fair saloons we chance to meet;

Nor when I'm jaded, sick, anxious, or mean.

But love me then and only, when you know

Me for the channel of the rivers of God

From deep ideal fontal heavens that flow.

TO and fro the Genius flies,

A light which plays and hovers

Over the maiden's head

And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes.

Of her faults I take no note,

Fault and folly are not mine;

Comes the Genius,—all's forgot,

Replunged again into that upper sphere

He scatters wide and wild its lustres here.

LOVE

Asks nought his brother cannot give;

Asks nothing, but does all receive.

Love calls not to his aid events;

He to his wants can well suffice:

Asks not of others soft consents,

Nor kind occasion without eyes;

Nor plots to ope or bolt a gate,

Nor heeds Condition's iron walls,—

Where he goes, goes before him Fate;

Whom he uniteth, God installs;

Instant and perfect his access

To the dear object of his thought,

Though foes and land and seas between

Himself and his love intervene.

GO if thou wilt, ambrosial flower,

Go match thee with thy seeming peers;

I will wait Heaven's perfect hour

Through the innumerable years.

TELL men what they knew before;

Paint the prospect from their door.

HIM strong Genius urged to roam,

Stronger Custom brought him home.

THOU shalt make thy house

The temple of a nation's vows.

Spirits of a higher strain

Who sought thee once shall seek again.

I detected many a god

Forth already on the road,

Ancestors of beauty come

In thy breast to make a home.

AS the drop feeds its fated flower,

As finds its Alp the snowy shower,

Child of the omnific Need,

Hurled into life to do a deed,

Man drinks the water, drinks the light.

EVER the Rock of Ages melts

Into the mineral air,

To be the quarry whence to build

Thought and its mansions fair.

YES, sometimes to the sorrow-stricken

Shall his own sorrow seem impertinent,

A thing that takes no more root in the world

Than doth the traveller's shadow on the rock.

THE archangel Hope

Looks to the azure cope,

Waits through dark ages for the morn,

Defeated day by day, but unto victory born.

BUT if thou do thy best,

Without remission, without rest,

And invite the sun-beam,

And abhor to feign or seem

Even to those who thee should love

And thy behavior approve;

If thou go in thine own likeness,

Be it health, or be it sickness;

If thou go as thy father's son,

If thou wear no mask or lie,

Dealing purely and nakedly,—

FROM the stores of eldest matter,

The deep-eyed flame, obedient water,

Transparent air, all-feeding earth,

He took the flower of all their worth,

And, best with best in sweet consent,

Combined a new temperament.

ASCENDING thorough just degrees

To a consummate holiness,

As angel blind to trespass done,

And bleaching all souls like the sun.

THE bard and mystic held me for their own,

I filled the dream of sad, poetic maids,

I took the friendly noble by the hand,

I was the trustee of the hand-cart man,

The brother of the fisher, porter, swain,

And these from the crowd's edge well pleased beheld

The service done to me as done to them.

WITH the key of the secret he marches faster,

From strength to strength, and for night brings day!

While classes or tribes, too weak to master

The flowing conditions of life, give way.

OH what is Heaven but the fellowship

Of minds that each can stand against the world

By its own meek and incorruptible will?

THAT each should in his house abide,

Therefore was the world so wide.

IF curses be the wage of love,

Hide in thy skies, thou fruitless Jove,

Not to be named:

It is clear Why the gods will not appear;

They are ashamed.

WHEN wrath and terror changed Jove's regal port,

And the rash-leaping thunderbolt fell short.

THE BOHEMIAN HYMN.

IN many forms we try

To utter God's infinity,

But the boundless hath no form,

And the Universal Friend

Doth as far transcend

An angel as a worm.

The great Idea baffles wit,

Language falters under it,

It leaves the learned in the lurch;

Nor art, nor power, nor toil can find

The measure of the eternal Mind,

Nor hymn, nor prayer, nor church.

PRAYER.

WHEN success exalts thy lot

God for thy virtue lays a plot.

And all thy life is for thy own,

Then for mankind's instruction shown;

And though thy knees were never bent,

To Heaven thy hourly prayers are sent,

And whether formed for good or ill

Are registered and answered still.

GRACE.

How much, preventing God, how much I owe

To the defences thou hast round me set;

Example, custom, fear, occasion slow,—

These scorned bondmen were my parapet.

I dare not peep over this parapet

To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below,

The depths of sin to which I had descended,

Had not these me against myself defended.

EROS.

THEY put their finger on their lip,

The Powers above:

The seas their islands clip,

The moons in ocean dip,

They love, but name not love.

WRITTEN IN NAPLES, MARCH 1833.

WE are what we are made; each following day

Is the Creator of our human mould

Not less than was the first; the all-wise God

Gilds a few points in every several life,

And as each flower upon the fresh hill-side,

And every colored petal of each flower,

Is sketched and dyed each with a new design,

Its spot of purple, and its streak of brown,

So each man's life shall have its proper lights,

And a few joys, a few peculiar charms,

For him round—in the melancholy hours

And reconcile him to the common days.

Not many men see beauty in the fogs

Of close low pine-woods in a river town;

Yet unto me not morn's magnificence,

Nor the red rainbow of a summer eve,

Nor Rome, nor joyful Paris, nor the halls

Of rich men blazing hospitable light,

Nor wit, nor eloquence,—no, nor even the song

Of any woman that is now alive,—

Hath such a soul, such divine influence,

Such resurrection of the happy past,

As is to me when I behold the morn

Ope in such low moist road-side, and beneath

Peep the blue violets out of the black loam,

Pathetic silent poets that sing to me

Thine elegy, sweet singer, sainted wife.

WRITTEN AT ROME, 1833.

ALONE in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too;—

Besides, you need not be alone; the soul

Shall have society of its own rank.

Be great, be true, and all the Scipios,

The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome

Shall flock to you and tarry by your side,

And comfort you with their high company.

Virtue alone is sweet society,

It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,

And opens you a welcome in them all.

You must be like them if you desire them,

Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim

Than wine or sleep or praise;

Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid,

And ever in the strife of your own thoughts

Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome:

That shall command a senate to your side;

For there is no might in the universe

That can contend with love. It reigns forever.

Wait then, sad friend, wait in majestic peace

The hour of heaven. Generously trust

Thy fortune's web to the beneficent hand

That until now has put his world in fee

To thee. He watches for thee still. His love

Broods over thee, and as God lives in heaven,

However long thou walkest solitary,

The hour of heaven shall come, the man appear.

PETER'S FIELD.

[KNOWS he who tills this lonely field

To reap its scanty corn

What mystic fruit his acres yield

At midnight and at morn?]

That field by spirits bad and good,

By Hell and Heaven is haunted,

And every rood in the hemlock wood

I know is ground enchanted.

[In the long sunny afternoon

The plain was full of ghosts,

I wandered up, I wandered down

Beset by pensive hosts.]

For in those lonely grounds the sun

Shines not as on the town,

In nearer arcs his journeys run,

And nearer stoops the moon.

There in a moment I have seen

The buried Past arise;

The fields of Thessaly grew green,

Old gods forsook the skies.

I cannot publish in my rhyme

What pranks the greenwood played;

It was the Carnival of time,

And Ages went or stayed.

To me that spectral nook appeared

The mustering Day of Doom,

And round me swarmed in shadowy troop

Things past and things to come.

The darkness haunteth me elsewhere;

There I am full of light;

In every whispering leaf I hear

More sense than sages write.

Underwoods were full of pleasance,

All to each in kindness bend,

And every flower made obeisance

As a man unto his friend.

Far seen the river glides below

Tossing one sparkle to the eyes.

I catch tny meaning, wizard wave;

The River of my Life replies.

THE WALK.

A QUEEN rejoices in her peers,

And wary Nature knows her own

By court and city, dale and down,

And like a lover volunteers,

And to her son will treasures more

And more to purpose freely pour

In one wood walk, than learned men

Can find with glass in ten times ten

MAY MORNING.

WHO saw the hid beginnings

When Chaos and Order strove,

Or who can date the morning

The purple flaming of love?

I saw the hid beginnings

When Chaos and Order strove,

And I can date the morning prime

And purple flame of love.

Song breathed from all the forest,

The total air was fame;

It seemed the world was all torches

That suddenly caught the flame.

Is there never a retroscope mirror

In the realms and corners of space

That can give us a glimpse of the battle

And the soldiers face to face?

Sit here on the basalt ranges

Where twisted hills betray

The seat of the world-old Forces

Who wrestled here on a day.

When the purple flame shoots up,

And Love ascends his throne,

I cannot hear your songs, O birds,

For the witchery of my own.

And every human heart

Still keeps that golden day

And rings the bells of jubilee

On its own First of May.

THE MIRACLE.

I HAVE trod this path a hundred times

With idle footsteps, crooning rhymes.

I know each nest and web-worm's tent,

The fox-hole which the woodchucks rent,

Maple and oak, the old Divan

Self-planted twice, like the banian.

I know not why I came again

Unless to learn it ten times ten.

To read the sense the woods impart

You must bring the throbbing heart.

Love is aye the counterforce,—

Terror and Hope and wild Remorse,

Newest knowledge, fiery thought,

Or Duty to grand purpose wrought.

Wandering yester morn the brake,

I reached this heath beside the lake,

And oh, the wonder of the power,

The deeper secret of the hour!

Nature, the supplement of man,

His hidden sense interpret can;—

What friend to friend cannot convey

Shall the dumb bird instructed say.

Passing yonder oak, I heard

Sharp accents of my woodland bird;

I watched the singer with delight,—

But mark what changed my joy to fright,—

When that bird sang, I gave the theme,

That wood-bird sang my last night's dream,

A brown wren was the Daniel

That pierced my trance its drift to tell,

Knew my quarrel, how and why,

Published it to lake and sky,

Told every word and syllable

In his flippant chirping babble,

All my wrath and all my shames,

Nay, God is witness, gave the names.

THE WATERFALL.

A PATCH of meadow upland

Reached by a mile of road,

Soothed by the voice of waters,

With birds and flowers bestowed.

Hither I come for strength

Which well it can supply,

For Love draws might from terrene force

And potencies of sky.

The tremulous battery Earth

Responds to the touch of man;

It thrills to the antipodes,

From Boston to Japan.

WALDEN.

IN my garden three ways meet,

Thrice the spot is blest;

Hermit thrush comes there to build,

Carrier doves to nest.

There broad-armed oaks, the copses' maze,

The cold sea-wind detain;

Here sultry Summer over-stays

When Autumn chills the plain.

Self-sown my stately garden grows;

The winds and wind-blown seed,

Cold April rain and colder snows

My hedges plant and feed.

From mountains far and valleys near

The harvests sown to-day

Thrive in all weathers without fear,—

Wild planters, plant away!

In cities high the careful crowds

Of woe-worn mortals darkling go,

But in these sunny solitudes

My quiet roses blow.

Methought the sky looked scornful down

On all was base in man,

And airy tongues did taunt the town,

“Achieve our peace who can!”

What need I holier dew

Than Walden's haunted wave,

Distilled from heaven's alembic blue,

Steeped in each forest cave?

If Thought unlock her mysteries,

If Friendship on me smile,

I walk in marble galleries,

I talk with kings the while.

And chiefest thou, whom Genius loved,

Daughter of sounding seas,

Whom Nature pampered in these groves

And lavished all to please,—

What wealth of mornings in her year,

What planets in her sky!

She chose her best thy heart to cheer,

Thy beauty to supply.

Now younger pilgrims find the stream,

The willows and the vine,

But aye to me the happiest seem

To draw the dregs of wine.

PAN.

O WHAT are heroes, prophets, men,

But pipes through which the breath of Pan doth blow

A momentary music. Being's tide

Swells hitherward, and myriads of forms

Live, robed with beauty, painted by the sun;

Their dust, pervaded by the nerves of God,

Throbs with an overmastering energy

Knowing and doing. Ebbs the tide, they lie

White hollow shells upon the desert shore.

But not the less the eternal wave rolls on

To animate new millions, and exhale

Races and planets, its enchanted foam.

MONADNOC FROM AFAR.

DARK flower of Cheshire garden,

Red evening duly dyes

Thy sombre head with rosy hues

To fix far-gazing eyes.

Well the Planter knew how strongly

Works thy form on human thought;

I muse what secret purpose had he

To draw all fancies to this spot.

THE SOUTH WIND.

SUDDEN gusts came full of meaning,

All too much to him they said,

Oh, south winds have long memories,

Of that be none afraid.

I cannot tell rode listeners

Half the tell-tale south wind said,—

'T would bring the blushes of yon maples

To a man and to a maid.

FAME.

AH Fate, cannot a man

Be wise without a beard?

East, West, from Beer to Dan,

Say, was it never heard

That wisdom might in youth be gotten,

Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten?

He pays too high a price

For knowledge and for fame

Who sells his sinews to be wise,

His teeth and bones to buy a name,

And crawls through life a paralytic

To earn the praise of bard and critic.

Were it not better done,

To dine and sleep through forty years;

Be loved by few; be feared by none;

Laugh life away; have wine for tears;

And take the mortal leap undaunted,

Content that all we asked was granted?

But Fate will not permit

The seed of gods to die,

Nor suffer sense to win from wit

Its guerdon in the sky,

Nor let us hide, whate'er our pleasure,

The world's light underneath a measure.

Go then, sad youth, and shine;

Go, sacrifice to Fame;

Put youth, joy, health, upon the shrine,

And life to fan the flame;

Being for Seeming bravely barter,

And die to Fame a happy martyr.

1824

WEBSTER.
FROM THE PHI BETA KAPPA POEM, 1834.

ILL fits the abstemious Muse a crown to weave

For living brows; ill fits them to receive:

And yet, if virtue abrogate the law,

One portrait,—fact or fancy—we may draw;

A form which Nature cast in the heroic mould

Of them who rescued liberty of old;

He, when the rising storm of party roared,

Brought his great forehead to the council board,

There, while hot heads perplexed with fears the state,

Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate;

Seemed, when at last his clarion accents broke,

As if the conscience of the country spoke.

Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood,

Than he to common sense and common good:

No mimic; from his breast his counsel drew,

Believed the eloquent was aye the true;

He bridged the gulf from th' alway good and wise

To that within the vision of small eyes.

Self-centred; when he launched the genuine word

It shook or captivated all who heard,

Ran from his mouth to mountains and the sea,

And burned in noble hearts proverb and prophecy.

WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF GOETHE.

SIX thankful weeks,—and let it be

A meter of prosperity,—

In my coat I bore this book,

And seldom therein could I look,

For I had too much to think,

Heaven and earth to eat and drink.

Is he hapless who can spare

In his plenty things so rare?

THE ENCHANTER.

IN the deep heart of man a poet dwells

Who all the day of life his summer story tells:

Scatters on every eye dust of his spells,

Scent, form and color: to the flowers and shells

Wins the believing child with wondrous tales;

Touches a cheek with colors of romance,

And crowds a history into a glance;

Gives beauty to the lake and fountain,

Spies over-sea the fires of the mountain;

When thrushes ope their throat, 't is he that sings,

And he that paints the oriole's fiery wings.

The little Shakspeare in the maiden's heart

Makes Romeo of a plough-boy on his cart;

Opens the eye to Virtue's starlike meed

And gives persuasion to a gentle deed.

PHILOSOPHER.

PHILOSOPHERS are lined with eyes within,

And, being so, the sage unmakes the man.

In love, he cannot therefore cease his trade;

Scarce the first blush has overspread his cheek,

He feels it, introverts his learned eye

To catch the unconscious heart in the very act.

His mother died,—the only friend he had,—

Some tears escaped, but his philosophy

Couched like a cat sat watching close behind

And throttled all his passion. Is't not like

That devil-spider that devours her mate

Scarce freed from her embraces?

LIMITS.

WHO knows this or that?

Hark in the wall to the rat:

Since the world was, he has gnawed;

Of his wisdom, of his fraud

What dost thou know?

In the wretched little beast

Is life and heart,

Child and parent,

Not without relation

To fruitful field and sun and moon.

What art thou? His wicked eye

Is cruel to thy cruelty.

INSCRIPTION FOR A WELL IN MEMORY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE WAR.

FALL, stream, from Heaven to bless; return as well;

So did our sons; Heaven met them as they fell.

THIS volume contains nearly all the pieces included in the POEMS and MAY-DAY of former editions. In 1876, Mr. Emerson published a selection from his Poems, adding six new ones, and omitting many. Of those omitted, several are now restored, in accordance with the expressed wishes of many readers and lovers of them. Also, some pieces never before published are here given in an Appendix; on various grounds. Some of them appear to have had Mr. Emerson's approval, but to have been withheld because they were unfinished. These it seemed best not to suppress, now that they can never receive their completion. Others, mostly of an early date, remained unpublished doubtless because of their personal and private nature. Some of these seem to have an autobiographic interest sufficient to justify their publication. Others again, often mere fragments, have been admitted as characteristic or as expressing in poetic form thoughts found in the Essays.

THE EXILE.
(AFTER TALIESSIN.)

THE heavy blue chain

Of the boundless main

Didst thou, just man, endure.

I HAVE an arrow that will find its mark,

A mastiff that will bite without a bark.

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