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Natural History of Intellect, 5. English Traits. and Other Papers. With a 6. Conduct of Life. General Index to Emerson's 7. Society and Solitude. Collected Works. The Same. With Emerson's Emerson in Concord, Cabot's Ralph Waldo Emerson (2 vols.), Emerson-Carlyle Correspondence (2 vols.). The set, 17 vols., nmo, half calf, gilt top, $59.25. Little Classic Edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with the Riverside Edition, except that the twelfth volume does not contain an Index. Each, i8mo, gilt top, $1.25 ; the set, $15.00; half calf, or half morocco, $27.00; half polished morocco, $30.00; tree calf, $39.00. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. Boston, New York, and Chicago. lo< /T6 Jx^AaAj!^ •3; Copyright, 1855, By PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO. Copyright, 1867, 1876, and 1878, By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Copyright, 1883, By EDWARD W. EMERSON. Copyright, 1897, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., IT. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton and Company. POEMS FROM THE WRITINGS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES By GEORGE H. BROWNE CONTENTS. PAGE I. PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL PIECES. t Concord Hymn 1 • Freedom 2 „ Sacrifice 2 . Voluntaries 3 ./Heroism 5 Easy to match what others do 6 • Boston Hymn 6 „ Boston 10 II. NATURE. ^ Nature 16 \^ The Snow-Storm 17 S The Titmouse 18 April 21 > May-Day 22 The Humble-Bee . . . . . . . . 32 , My Garden 35 Two Rivers 38 Sea-Shore 39 Waldeinsamkeit 42 -• The Apology 44 Woodnotes 45 The Song of the Pine-Tree 52 The World-Soul 54 monadnoc from afar 59 III. LIFE AND CHARACTER. Each and All 60 The Rhodora 62 The Problem 63 The Romany Girl 67 Days 69 Forerunners 70 Sursum Corda 72 iv CONTENTS. To J. W """ . .73 Forbearance 74 Etienne de la Boece 75 Friendship . . . 77 Good-Bye 78 Character . ' 80 Terminus 81 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. To the biographies referred to in the notes the following may- be added on account of the bibliographies appended to them : Alex. Ireland's (1882) and Dr. Richard Garnett's (Great Wri- ters Series, 1888). The Second Supplement to Poole's Index (1887-1891), Fletcher's Index to General Literature (1893), The Annual Literary Index (1892-), and The Cleveland Cumu- lative Index to Periodicals (1896-), will furnish later articles. The best may be found under the names Alcott, Arnold, Bartol, Benton, Burroughs, Chadwick, Chapman, Clarke, Conway, Cranch, Everett, Frothingham, Furness, Hale, Harris, Hawthorne, Hedge, Higginson, Howells, James, Morley, Norton, Sanborn, Stedman, Thayer, Underwood, Whipple, and Woodbury. ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1887), J. Elliot Cabot. Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad (1882), Moncure D. Conway. Cooke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Life, Writings, and Philo- sophy (1882), George Willis Cooke. E. W. E., Emerson in Concord (1889), Edward Waldo Em- erson. O. W. H., Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Men of Letters, 1885), Oliver Wendell Holmes. xii, 115, Emerson's Works, Riverside edition, volume xii, page 115. For convenience in identifying the references, the contents of each volume are given on the next two pages. With the dates appended, the list may serve as a concise chronological literary biography. In Mr. Cabot's Memoir, 710 ft\, may be found a COMPLETE WORKS. v chronological list of all of Emerson's Lectures and Addresses, with references to volume and page if published in his collected writings, or with short abstracts if still unpublished. COMPLETE WORKS, RIVERSIDE EDITION. i. Nature and Addresses (1847), p. 13, Nature (1836) ; 81, American Scholar (1837) ; 117, Divinity Address (1838) ; 149, Literary Ethics (1838) ; 181, Method of Nature (1841) ; 215, Man the Reformer (1841) ; 245, Lecture on the Times (1841) ; 277, The Conservative (1841) ; 309, The Transcenden- talist (1842) ; 341, Young American (1844). ii. Essays : First Series (1841), p. 7, History ; 45, Self-Reli- ance ; 89, Compensation ; 123, Spiritual Laws ; 159, Love ; 181, Friendship ; 207, Prudence ; 231, Heroism ; 249, Over-Soul ; 279, Circles ; 301, Intellect ; 325, Art (1836). iii. Essays: Second Series (1844), p. 7, Poet ; 47, Experience; 87, Character ; 115, Manners ; 151, Gifts ; 161, Nature ; 189, Politics ; 213, Nominalist and Realist ; 237, New England Re- formers. iv. Representative Men (1850) p. 7, Uses of Great Men ; 39, Plato ; 78, Plato, New Readings ; 89, Swedenborg ; 141, Mon- taigne ; 179, Shakespeare ; 211, Napoleon ; 247, Goethe. v. English Traits (1855). vi. Conduct of Life (1860), p. 7, Fate; 53, Power; 83, Wealth; 125, Culture ; 161, Behavior ; 191, Worship ; 231, Considera- tions by the Way ; 265, Beauty ; 291, Illusions. vii. Society and Solitude (1870), p. 7, Society and Solitude; 21, Civilization ; 39, Art ; 61, Eloquence ; 99, Domestic Life ; 131, Farming ; 149, Works and Days ; 179, Books ; 211, Clubs ; 237, Courage ; 265, Success ; 297, Old Age. viii. Letters and Social Aims (1876), p. 7, Poetry and Imagi- nation ; 77, Social Aims ; 107, Eloquence ; 131, Resources ; 149, The Comic ; 167, Quotations and Originality ; 195, Progress of Culture ; 223, Persian Poetry ; 255, Inspiration ; 283, Great- ness ; 305, Immortality. ix. Poems (1847, 1 1867, ' 1876, 2 1883 3 ). x. Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883), p. 7, Demonol- ogy (1839) ; 33, Aristocracy (1848) ; 69, Perpetual Forces (1877) ; 91, Character (1866) ; 123, Education ; 157, The vi COMPLETE WORKS. Superlative (1882) ; 175, The Sovereignty of Ethics (1878) ; 207, The Preacher (1867) ; 229, The Man of Letters (1863) ; 247, The Scholar (1876) ; 275, Plutarch (1871) ; 305, Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England ; 349, The Chard on Street Convention (1843) ; 355, Ezra Ripley ; 371, Mary Moody Emerson (1869) ; 405, Samuel Hoar (1856) ; 419, Thoreau, (1862) ; 453, Carlyle (1848). xi. Miscellanies (1883), p. 7, The Lord's Supper (1882); 31, Historical Discourse at Concord (1835) ; 99, Address, Soldiers' Monument, Concord (1867) ; 129, Address, West India Eman- cipation (1844) ; 177, War (1838) ; 203, Fugitive Slave Law (1854) ; 231, Assault on Sumner (1856) ; 239, Affairs in Kan- sas (1856) ; 249, Relief John Brown's Family (1859) ; 257, John Brown, Speech at Salem (1860) ; 265, Theodore Parker (1860) ; 275, American Civilization (1862) ; 291, Emancipation Proclamation (1862) ; 305, Abraham Lincoln (1865) ; 317, Har- vard Commemoration Speech (1865) ; 323, Editor's Address, Mass. Quarterly Review (1847) ; 335, Woman (1855) ; 357, Address to Kossuth (1852) ; 363, Robert Burns (1859) ; 373, Walter Scott (1871) ; 379, Organization of the Free Religious Association (1867) ; 385, Annual Meeting of the Free Religious Association (1869) ; 393, Fortune of the Republic (1878). xii. Natural History of Intellect, and Other Papers (1893), p. 3, Natural History of Intellect (1870-71) ; 61, Memory (1870-71); 83, Boston (1861) ; 113, Michael Angelo (1837) ; 143, Milton (1838) ; 175, Papers from The Dial (1840-44) : 177, Thoughts on Modern Literature ; 201, Walter Savage Landor ; 212, Prayers ; 219, Agriculture of Massachusetts ; 225, Europe and European Books ; 237, Past and Present ; 249, A Letter ; 260, The Tragic ; 273, General Index. In this volume, the papers on Boston, Michael Angelo, and Milton are of special interest to the users of this little book; the last, written in 1835, may serve to-day as a most admirable auto- biography of Emerson. "Are we not the better," it concludes, " are not all men fortified by the remembrance of the bravery, the purity, the temperance, the toil, the independence, and the angelic devotion of this man, who, taking counsel of himself, en- deavored, in his writings and in his life, to carry out the life of man to new heights of spiritual grace and dignity, without any abatement of its strength ? " INTRODUCTION. Although the whole body of Emerson's verse barely fills one moderate-sized volume, — a small twelfth of his published works, — a constantly growing number of readers are learning to value the poems even more highly than the prose. When a friend, soon after the publication of May- Day, expressed to Emerson his pleasure in the book, adding that, much as he valued the essays, he cared more for the poems, Emerson laughingly answered : " I beg you always to remain of that opinion." He then went on more seriously to say, that he himself liked his poems best, because it was not he who wrote them ; because he could not write them by will ; he could say, " I will write an essay ; I can breathe at any time," he added, "but I can whistle only when the right pucker comes." l That was thirty years ago. To-day there is an increas- ing number, not only of those who value the verse more highly than the prose, but also of those who value it as the highest and most truly representative American contribu- tion to literature. Emerson's fellow-poets were the first to recognize his superiority. Dr. Holmes has acknowledged it in his appreciative biography; Lowell, loyal "liegeman," as he signed himself, has testified to the spiritual and intel- lectual passion of Emerson's verse, " some of which is as exquisite as any in the language ; " and Whittier, speaking one day of modern writers, said : " I regard Emerson as foremost in the rank of American poets ; he has written better things than any of us." 2 In the fifty years that have now just elapsed since the publication of Emerson's first 1 Emerson in Concord. E. W. E., p. 230. 2 PickariTs Life, ii, 696. viii INTRODUCTION. volume of verse, the general reader, too, has learned, chiefly through Emerson himself, to appreciate his poetry. What Emerson said of Wordsworth in a lecture on Books in Bos- ton, 1864, may fitly be applied to himself : " This rugged countryman walks and sits alone for years, assured of his sanity and his inspiration, sneered at and disparaged, yet no more doubting the fine oracles that visited him than if Apollo had visibly descended to him on Helvellyn. Now, so few years after, it is lawful in that obese England 1 to affirm, unresisted, the superiority of his genius." 2 The present generation of readers cannot fail to see, in the recep- tion which Emerson's first volume met, chiefly mere " curi- osities of criticism ; " 8 tradition, however, is strong, and many young people are prone to believe in advance that, like Caesar's bridge, Emerson's poetry is hard. When they begin to read the poems in the arrangement of the author- ized editions and find no narrative, no individual charac- ters, little metrical variety, and occasional faulty rhyme and halting rhythm, " Why, this is different from any other poetry we ever read," they exclaim ; " we don't understand it, and we don't like it." And when the same old criticism is revived in their own day in a more persuasive form, from more authoritative sources, 4 inexperienced readers are too 1 Or " in this great, intelligent, sensual, avaricious America." Em- erson to Carlyle, July 31, 1841 ; " this mendicant, curious, peering, itinerant, imitative America." vii, 172. 2 Cabot, 790. 3 As a specimen, the extravagances of Prof. Francis Bowen's aca- demic ohtuseness will be amusing to the most uncritical of to-day. North American Review (1847), 64: 402. 4 Matthew Arnold, 1883, and John Morley, 1884 : " Delicate and adroit artisans, in whose eyes poetry is solely a piece of design, may find the awkwardness of Emerson's verse a bar to right comprehension of its frequent beauty and universal purpose. I am not sure but one must be of the poet's own country and breeding to look quite down his vistas and by-paths ; for every American has something of Emer- son in him, and the accent of the land was in the poet." Emerson, I fear, would not have felt complimented by this suggestion of Mr. Stedman, but I suspect it is not without truth. Prof. J. B. Thayer's INTRODUCTION. ix prone to assume that the difficulty is with Emerson and not with them, and they give up discouraged. To prevent this untimely discouragement, and to present Emerson's poetry in such order and with such brief illustration as shall tide the beginner over any early obstacles, and bring him to his own, is the main object of the following selections. Emerson's prose is the best elucidator of his verse, for more truly may it be said of the lover of Emerson than Emerson said of the lover of Milton : " He reads one sense in his prose and in his metrical compositions." * Whatever the obstacles that the form of his verse may present at first, they will disappear with the reader's growing familiarity with the poet's leading thoughts. Emerson had no affecta- tion of ruggedness and obscurity ; whatever ruggedness there was, was a part of his mind, as inseparable from his thought as his skin from his body. At the worst, its importance as an obstacle has been greatly exaggerated. Many of Emerson's poems are charged with a patriotism so electrifying, transfigured by an imagination and diction so splendid yet simple, and uttered withal in a tone so pro- phetic and so authoritative, that their meaning and their beauty must possess you ; and in all of Emerson's verse there is such challenge to the keenest intellect and profound- est moral sentiment, that often, just because you cannot tell exactly all it means, it haunts your memory with quite as much fascination as the music of more melodious verse, to any meaning of which you are indifferent. Emerson's aim was not merely to delight but to invigorate his reader ; 2 to see the naked truth himself, and to find the perfect universal expression for it, and, by publishing it, to be free of it, in order that he and his reader, too, might find deeper truth. " For all men live by truth," he says, 3 " and stand in need of expression. . . . The man is only half himself ; the other letter, appended to his Western Journey with Mr. Emerson, Boston, 18S4, is one of the best things called out by the controversy arising from Arnold's famous lecture. 1 xii, 172. a Cf. Cabot, 626 ; v, 243 ; vi, 183. 3 iii, 11. x INTRODUCTION. half is his expression. Notwithstanding this necessity to be published," he adds, " adequate expression is rare," and as early as 1838 wrote : " I am not sufficiently master of the little truth I see, to know how to state it in forms so gen- eral as shall put every mind in possession of my point of view." l Here is the secret of the difficulty of Emerson ; 2 and because his " songs of laws and causes " 3 are so heavily laden with thought, and the expression is so general and so impersonal, it is important that the young reader should, from Emerson's prose, learn something of his " point of view " before he can read aright or measure fairly. What Emerson says of his own inadequacy, however, must not be taken too literally ; for his ideal was so high that he had to confess, " I look in vain for the poet whom I describe." 4 In the preface to Parnassus (1874), his volume of selections of the choicest poems in the language, he says : " The great poets are judged by the frame of mind they induce ; and to them, of all men, the severest criticism is due." To no poet did Emerson apply severer criticism than to himself, for no one ever had a higher conception of the character of the poet and the function of poetry. No writer has ever given more adequate expression to that conception ; and if we could explain why that expression is more adequate in the poems Saadi, Beauty, Merlin, Frag- ments on the Poet and the Poetic Gift, than in the prose essays on Nature, the Poet, Art, and Poetry and Imagina- tion, we should have plucked out the heart of his mystery. Since the matter is so important, however, it is well to pre- sent an outline of his theory of poetry ; and, that the state- ment may be as brief and authoritative as possible, it will be best to let Emerson make it in his own inimitable words. 5 1 Conway, 209. Cf . xii, 38. 2 Cf. Alcott's difficulty with Emerson's conversation, B. W. Emer- son: an Estimate of his Character and Genius (Boston, 1888), p. 40. 3 Cabot, 479. 4 iii, 40. 5 References to the prose works are given in order that the student and teacher may read the extracts with their proper context. See p. v. INTRODUCTION. xi " I am born a poet," he writes in 1835 to Miss Jackson during their engagement, — "of a low class without doubt, yet a poet. That is my nature and vocation. My singing, be sure, is very husky, and is for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmonies that are in the soul and in matter, and specially of the correspondences between these and those." 1 This is the key-note of Emerson's aim and power, struck the year before his first publication (Nature, 1836) ; all other expressions of his ideal are but variations on this note. Poetry, he says, is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing, to pass the brute body and search the life and reason which cause it to exist. 2 Possessed by a heroic passion, the poet uses matter as symbols of it. The sen- sual man conforms thoughts to things ; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. 3 Things tally with thoughts, because they are at bottom the same ; knowledge is the perception of this identity. We first are the things we know, and then we come to speak and to write them, — translate them into the new sky-language we call thought. And it is the nat- ural logic, and not syllogisms, that can help us to understand and to verify our experience. 4 The poet discovers that whatrfnen value as substances have a higher value as sym- bols, — that Nature is the immense shadow of man. 5 The primary use of fact is low ; the secondary use, as it is a figure or illustration of my thought, is the real worth. 6 A happy symbol is a sort of evidence that your thought is just. If you agree with me, I may yet be wrong ; but if the elm- tree thinks the same thing, — if running water, if burning coal, if crystals, if alkalies, in their several fashions, say what I say, — it must be true. 7 Thus a good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands. 8 1 Cabot, 236. 2 viii, 22 ; ii, 17 ; viii, 71. 3 i, 56. 4 Natural History of Intellect, Cabot, 639 ; xii, 226. 5 viii, 27 ; iii, 18, 19 ; xii, 39 ; iv, 56. 6 viii, 16. 7 Cf. iii, 30 ; xii, 5. 8 viii, 18 ; read the suggestive entry in his Journal, Cabot, 293 ; and the beginning of The Poet, ix, 253. xii INTRODUCTION. Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer saw the splendor of meaning that plays over the visible world ; knew that a tree had .another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth than for tillage and roads, — that these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their natural history a certain mute commentary on human life. 1 The poet must believe in his poetry. 2 Homer, Mil- ton, Hafiz, Herbert, Swedenborg, Wordsworth are heartily enamoured of their sweet thoughts. Moreover, they know that this correspondence of things to thoughts is far deeper than they can penetrate, defying adequate expression ; that it is elemental, 3 or in the core of things. Philosophy will one day be taught by poets. The poet is the natural attitude : he is believing ; the philosopher, after some strug- gle, having only reasons for believing. 4 Veracity, therefore, is that which we require in poets, — that they shall say how it was with them, and not what might be said. And the fault of our popular poetry is that it is not sincere. 5 Much that we call poetry is but polite verse. A little more or less skill in whistling is of no account. 6 Our poets are men of talents who sing, not children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of the verses is primary [with them]. It is not metres, however, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, — the thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new thought ; he has a whole new experience to unfold ; he will tell how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. 7 1 iv, 206 ; it is this spirit that is infused through even the simplest of Emerson's Nature poems. Cf. The Apology, 17-20, p. 45. 2 viii, 33 ; ef. iii, 180 ; iv, 181 ; viii, 217. 3 viii, 33, the very word that Dr. Holmes uses so aptly to characterize Emerson's poetry, p. 340. Cf. viii, 45 ; ii, 270, 271 ; iii, 37. 4 xii, 13 ; i, 59. 5 viii, 33 ; iii, 11 ; ii, 196 ; x, 252 ; v, 242, 243. 6 viii, 73 ; vi, 151. 7 iii, 15 ; i, 103 ; Saadi, ix, 116. INTRODUCTION. xiii The reason why we set so high a value on any poetry — as often on a line or a phrase as on a poem — is that it is a new work of Nature, as a man is. It must be new as foam and as old as the rock. But a new verse comes once in a thousand years. 1 It is not surprising, therefore, that we often overhear Emerson saying that he looks in vain for the poet he de- scribes. What, then, was the fascination that metrical com- position had for hint ? Again let Emerson answer in his own words : " Music and rhyme are among the earliest pleasures of the child, and, in the history of literature, poetry precedes prose. Every one may see, as he rides on the highway through an uninteresting landscape, how a little water instantly relieves the monotony ; no matter what ob- jects are near it, — a gray rock, a grass-patch, an alder- bush, or a stake, — they become beautiful by being reflected. It is rhyme to the eye, and explains the charm of rhyme to the ear. 2 I amuse myself often as I walk," he writes in his Journal (1853), "with humming the rhythm of the decasyl- labic quatrain, or of the octosyllabic or other rhythms, and believe these metres to be organic, or derived from our hu- man pulse, 3 and to be, therefore, not proper to one nation, but to mankind. But I find a wonderful charm, heroic, and especially deeply pathetic or plaintive in the cadence, and say to myself, Ah, happy if one could fill the small measures with words approaching to the power of these beats ! Young people like rhyme, drum-beat, tune, things in pairs and alternatives, and in higher degrees we know the instant power of music to change our mood and give us its own ; and human passion, seizing these constitutional tunes, aims to fill them with appropriate words, or marry music to the thought, believing that for every thought its proper mel- ody or rhyme exists, though the odds are immense against our finding it." 4 Let poetry, then, pass, if it will, into music 1 viii, 43, 192 ; x, 256, 257. 2 viii, 47. 3 "The normal respiratory measure." O. W. H., 335. 4 E. W. E., 231. Cf. 1'i'in ; and Imagination, viii, 49. xiv INTRODUCTION. and rhyme. That is the form which itself puts on. We do not put watches in wooden, but in crystal cases, and rhyme is the transparent frame that allows almost the pure architecture of thought to become visible to the mental eye. Substance is much, but so is form much. The poet, like a delighted boy, brings you heaps of rainbow bubbles, opaline, air-born, spherical as the world, instead of a few drops of soap and water. 1 " Moreover, rhyme, being a kind of music, shares this advantage with music, that it has a privilege of speaking truth which all Philistia is unable to challenge. Music is the poor man's Parnassus. With the first note of the flute or horn, or the first strain of a song, we quit the world of common sense and launch on the sea of ideas and emotions ; we pour contempt upon the prose you so mag- nify ; yet the sturdiest Philistine is silent. The like allow- ance is the prescriptive right of poetry. You shall not speak ideal truth in prose uncontradicted ; you may in verse." 2 In verse, therefore, Emerson secured an expression more nearly adequate to the idea in his own mind. " To lectur- ing he could reconcile himself, and even find in it a good side; but it was, after all, an expedient, not the mode of ut- terance to which he aspired. That was verse, not so much, I think," says his biographer and literary executor, " from a direct impulse toward rhythmical expression as for the sake of freer speech." 8 " The poet knows that he speaks adequately," says Emerson, "then only when he speaks wildly, or ' with the flower of his mind.' " 4 The " flower- ing" of most of the thoughts in the essays occurs in the poems ; and the method of elucidation adopted in this selec- tion consists chiefly in setting the prose and verse expres- sions of the same idea side by side. Emerson's poetic creation may be divided into three dis- 1 viii, 54. 2 viii, 53. 8 Cabot, 479. 4 iii, 30 ; read the rest of this instructive passage. INTRODUCTION. xv tinct periods : the first, the youthful, academic, imitative period, ending with the Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1834 ; the second, the period of revolt, overlapping the first somewhat, and ending with the publication of the first volume of poems in 1847 ; the third, the period of maturity, reflection, and quietly biding his time. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, in the sketch of his father, gives an interesting account of the char- acteristics of each period, and of the influences operative in each. Of the poetry of the first period, there was little that gave promise of the poetry of the last ; and little is now read except Good-Bye Proud World, Webster (ix, 312), and a few personal poems, written in ill-health, amid the losses and disappointments of his early ministry. But before that period was over, Emerson had begun his great poem, The Discontented Poet ; he was beginning to feel and know his power. From his first visit to Europe he returned invigo- rated and self-possessed, and declared his intellectual inde- pendence in Nature, 1836. The next ten years was the period of his greatest productivity, just as the ten years following - the publication of Lyrical Ballads were Words- worth's most prolific years. Both were periods of revolt from traditions of the past. Both poets suffered from the extravagance with which they first asserted their own inde- pendence. " Rhyme, " wrote Emerson in his Journal, June 27, 1839, " not tinkling rhyme, but grand, Pindaric strokes as firm as the tread of a horse ; rhyme that vindi- cates itself as an art, the stroke of the bell of a cathedral ; rhyme which knocks at prose and dulness with the stroke of a cannon-ball ; rhyme which builds out into chaos and old night a splendid architecture to bridge the impassable, and call aloud on all the children of morning that the Creation is recommencing. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom." " Great is the art. Great be the manners, of the bard. Hi' shall not his brain encumber xvi INTRODUCTION. With the coil of rhythm and number ; But, leaving- rule and pale forethought, He shall aye climb For his rhyme. ' Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, ' In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.' " Merlin, ix, 107. The public was not familiar enough then with Emerson's " point of view " to accept this surprising manner of the bard. The reception of the volume of 1847 was a disap- pointment to him. But he was wiser than his critics. He bided his time. 1 "The verses of the late period (after 1847)," his son says, " were long kept by him ; and in fortunate days, as he crooned the lines to himself, walking in Walden woods, the right words sjirang into place. Almost all the poems of the later volume (1867) had been in years greatly changed and mellowed from the song struggling for expression, first written in the note-book on his return from the woods, where I believe that nearly all his poems had their birth." 2 But this changing and mellowing was not a mere polishing, to add beauty to the original thought : it was a renewed search after the most vivid thought ; for, according to Em- erson's theory, " a vivid thought brings the power to paint it, and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection. 8 Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not a vehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case ; the verse must be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man inspires and directs the body, and we measure the inspiration by the music. In reading 1 Note the passage in The Poet beginning " Not yet, not yet" ix, 256. 2 E. W. E., 231, 232. Compare Two Rivers, p. 38, and Sea-Shore, p. 39, with their earlier forms given in the Appendix, p. 87. 3 x , 225. INTRODUCTION. xvii prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags ; but, in poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts, the expression mounts." x With this passage and the passage from " Parnassus " in mind, we may safely leave the question of form and sub- stance to Emerson himself. His lectures, when first written and delivered, showed much more obviously coherent struc- ture than after he had condensed them unsparingly for pub- lication. But just as fuller appreciation of the thought of his essays detects a logical connection that even the author himself could not have pointed out, so readers of Emerson's verse are beginning to suspect that he had the finest touch when he chose to apply it. " It becomes a question whether his discords are those of an undeveloped artist or the sud- den craft of one who knows all art and can afford to be on easy terms with it. . . . Not seldom a lyrical phrase is the more taking for its halt, — helped out, like the poet's own speech, by the half-stammer and pause that were wont to precede the rarest or weightest word of all." 2 With what surprising illumination that word fell upon the hearer, Lowell has told us. 3 " No man, in my judgment," he re- peats, " ever had a greater mastery of English. Emerson's instinct for the best word was infallible. Wherever he found one, he froze to it, as we say in our admirable vernac- ular. I have sometimes found that he had added to his cabinet the one good word in a book he had read." Like Montaigne's, his words are vascular and alive. Cut these words and they would bleed. 4 In those elements of poetry, then, more important than rhyme and rhythm : prophetic insight, moral sanity, imaginative felicity and audacity of speech, transfigured by feeling, — the accent of the Great Maker, — Emerson stands first among American poets. 1 viii, 56 ; vii, 53. 2 Stedman, Poets of America, pp. 135, 159. 3 Cf. also Cabot, (ilrl). 4 iv, 160 ; cf. viii, 7.' J. xviii INTRODUCTION. " The passive master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned." 1 For poetry, Emerson believed, was all written before time was ; and, whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or verse and sub- stitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imjDerfect, be- come the songs of nations. 2 Few poets ever heard more clearly those primal warblings than Emerson, and his transcripts are sometimes perfect. In the following selections, the more simple, concrete, and spontaneous of these transcripts are placed first ; then the Nature poems ; and, lastly, the poems on Life, — beauty, friendship, self-reliance, character, etc. Since, however, Emerson saw in the panorama of Nature chiefly emblems of his thought, — " Melting matter into dreams, And whatever glows or seems, Into substance, into laws," 3 — the distinction between poems on Nature and on Life is not to be insisted upon. With the exception of Freedom, Vol- untaries, May- Day, and Woodnotes, the poems are printed intact. The Threnody, the most spontaneous, passionate lyrical elegy ever inspired by sorrow, cannot be divided, and, like Monadnoc, is too long for insertion. The little poem on Heroism is attracted forward by its heroic com- panionship ; with full illustration, however, it may serve as a suggestive example, introduced rather early, of Emer- son's unique faculty of oracular condensation : into the last four verses are concentrated the substance of the essays on Self-Reliance, Heroism, Society and Sulitude, and Character. 1 See The Problem, 47, note, p. GG. 2 hi, 13, 28, 29. 3 ix, 271. I. PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL PIECES. CONCORD HYMN: SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, APRIL 19, 1836. 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 ; 5 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 ; 10 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 15 The shaft we raise to them and thee. 3. Does this shaft mark the spot where the farmers stood, or where the British fell ? Read Emerson's brief Address at the Hundredth Anniversary of the Concord Fight, April 19, 1875, the last piece written out with his own hand. {Cooke, 182.) See Appendix, p. 83. What does the most familiar line in the PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL. FREEDOM. Freedom's secret wilt thou know ? — Counsel not with flesh and blood ; Loiter not for cloak or food ; Right thou feelest, rush to do. SACRIFICE. Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — " 'T is man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die." poem really mean ? Compare with it this sentence from the Address: "The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground, but the light of it fills the horizon," — a thought to which Emerson had previously given a poetic expression that now may well be ap- plied to the author of this perfect poem, " a model for all of its kind" (0. JF. #., 332): — " His instant thought a poet spoke, And filled the age his fame ; An inch of ground the lightning strook, But lit the sky with flame." ix, 277. 4. "Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is al- ways right." ii, 236. "Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive." iii, 70. " ' Time,' say the Indian Scriptures, ' drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be performed, and which is delayed in the execution.' " American Civilization, Riv. Lit. No. 42, p. 87. xi, 288. See Appendix, p. 83. 4. " I have a note of a conversation that occurred in our first company the morning before the Battle of Bull Run. At a halt in the march, a few of onr boys were sitting on a rail fence talking together whether it was right to sacrifice themselves. One of them said, ' he had been thinking a good deal about it last night, and he thought one was never too young to die for a VOLUNTARIES. VOLUNTARIES. In an age of fops and toys, Wanting wisdom, void of right, Who shall nerve heroic boys To hazard all in Freedom's fight, — Break sharply off their jolly games, 5 Forsake their comrades gay And quit proud homes and youthful dames For famine, toil and fray ? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, 10 That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, Thou must, is The youth replies, I can. principle.' " Address at the Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument in Concord, April 19, 1867 (xi, 108). Read the whole of it. Cf. x, 246. " To Emerson, more than to all other causes together, did the young martyrs of our Civil War owe the sustaining strength of thoughtful heroism that is so touching in every record of their lives." (Lowell.) Cabot, 628. See Appendix, p. 84. 13-16. " These lines, a moment after they were written, seemed as if they had been carved on marble for a thousand years." O. W. H., 241. Cf. The Preacher, x, 216. "It is easy to recall the mood in which our young men, snatched from every peaceful pursuit, went to the war. Many of them had never handled a gun. They said, ' It is not in me to resist. I go because I must. It is a duty which I shall never forgive myself if I decline. I do not know that I can make a soldier. I may be very clumsy. Perhaps I shall be timid ; but you can rely on me. Only one thing is certain: I can well die, but I cannot afford to misbehave.' " xi, 320. Har- vard Commemoration Speech, July 21, 1865. PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL. O, well for the fortunate soul Which Music's wings infold, Stealing away the memory Of sorrows new and old ! 20 Yet happier he whose inward sight, Stayed on his subtile thought, Shuts his sense on toys of time, To vacant bosoms brought. But best befriended of the God 25 He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread 30 Leading over heroic ground, W r ailed with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Peril around, all else appalling, 35 Cannon in front and leaden rain Him duty through the clarion calling To the van called not in vain. Stainless soldier on the walls, Knowing this, — and knows no more, — 40 Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore, Justice after as before, — And he who battles on her side, God, though he were ten times slain, . 45 Crowns him victor glorified, Victor over death and pain. HEROISM. HEROISM. Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons ; Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons, Drooping oft in wreaths of dread, 5 Lightning-knotted round his head ; The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats ; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails. 10 8. In reading this poem, be careful to bring out the contrasts by proper intonation. Be not too matter-of-fact, — like one of Mr. Emerson's worthy but literal-minded townswomen, who, on her way home from his lecture on Plato, remarked to a neigh- bor, " if those old heathen really did such things as Mr. Emer- son said they did, the less said about them the better." What Emerson had said was: "Plato especially has no external bio- graphy. If he had lover, wife, or children, we hear nothing of them. He ground them into paint" — a poetical exaggeration not unlike that in the text. What is the prose equivalent ? Cf. " The Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself." ii, 114. 9. The great man must sit alone. Cf. Saadi, ix, 114 ; i, 168, 169 ; vi, 150. " Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself. Solitary was he ? Why, yes ; but his society was limited only by the amount of brain Nature appropriated in that age to carry on the government of the world," vii, 13 ; see xii, 51, 52; or, Chambers of the truly great are often jails in the end, as in the case of Socrates, Galileo, Columbus, etc. See vii, 258. 10. " Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have over- come. Without war, no soldiei's; without enemies, no hero. Not Antoninus but a poor washerwoman said : ' The more trouble, the more lion; that 's my principle.' " vi, 242. Cf. ii, 114; viii, 219; xii, 55. See Appendix, p. 81. PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL. EASY TO MATCH WHAT OTHERS DO. Easy to match what others do, Perform the feat as well as they ; Hard to out-do the brave, the true, And find a loftier way. BOSTON HYMN * READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863. The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame. God said, I am tired of kings, 5 I suffer them no more ; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, 10 * On the 22d of September, President Lincoln issued his pro- clamation that slavery would be abolished on the 1st of January, 1863, in those States which should then be in rebellion against the United States. The same month, Emerson, at a meeting in Boston, expressed his approval in the Speech on the Emancipation Proclamation, — Riv. Lit. No. 42, pp. 90, 100, xi, 293 ft., — and at the " Jubilee Concert," when the Emancipation went into effect, read this poem by way of prologue. " It is a rough piece of verse, but noble from beginning to end." 0. W. H., 240. Cf. Conway, 47, 314. 2. See Appendix, p. 85. BOSTON HYMN. 7 Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor ? My angel, — his name is Freedom, — Choose him to be your king ; He shall cut pathways east and west 15 And fend you with his wing. Lo ! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best ; 20 I show Columbia, of the rocks Which dip their foot in the seas And soar to the air-borne flocks Of clouds and the boreal fleece. I will divide my goods ; 25 Call in the wretch and slave : None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have. I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great ; 30 Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a state. 28. See 61-64, 69-72. Remember that this was written in 1862. Read Emerson's courageous defence of labor at the be- ginning of American Civilization, Riv. Lit. No. 42, p. 76, xi, 275, delivered in January, 1862, in Washington, while yet slavery had a hold upon the national capital and the Emancipation Pro- clamation was six months off. 8 PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL. Go, cut down trees in the forest And trim the straightest boughs ; Cut down trees in the forest 35 And build me a wooden house. Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest field, Hireling and him that hires ; 40 And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church and state and school. Lo, now ! if these poor men 45 Can govern the land and sea And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be. And ye shall succor men ; 'T is nobleness to serve : 50 Help them who cannot help again : Beware from right to swerve. I break your bonds and masterships, And I unchain the slave : 50. " Ich Dien, I serve, is a truly royal motto." American Civ- ilization, p. 76, xi, 275. " The founders of Massachusetts did not try to unlock the treasure of the world except by honest keys of labor and skill. They knew, as God knew, that command of nature comes by obedience to nature ; that reward comes by faithful service ; that the most noble motto was that of the Prince of Wales, — ' I serve,' — and that he is greatest who serves best." Boston, 1861, xii, 105. See Appendix, p. 85. BOSTON HYMN. Free be his heart and hand henceforth i As wind and wandering wave. I cause from every creature His proper good to flow : As much as he is and doeth, So much he shall bestow. e But, laying hands on another To coin his labor and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt. To-day unbind the captive, c So only are ye unbound ; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound ! Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. 70 Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him. O North ! give him beauty for rags, And honor, O South ! for his shame ; Nevada ! coin thy golden crags 75 With Freedom's image and name. Up ! and the dusky race That sat in darkness Ions', — Be swift their feet as antelopes, And as behemoth strong. 80 57-60. See Worship, vi, 210, 211, 216; Spiritual Laics, ii, 143-148. 69. See Appendix, p. 85. 10 PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL. Come, East and West and North, By races, as snow-flakes, And carry my purpose forth, Which neither halts nor shakes. My will fulfilled shall be, For, in daylight or in dark, My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark. BOSTON.* SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOBIS. The rocky nook with hill-tops three Looked eastward from the farms, And twice each day the flowing sea Took Boston in its arms ; The men of yore were stout and poor, 5 And sailed for bread to every shore. And where they went on trade intent They did what freemen can, Their dauntless ways did all men praise, The merchant was a man. 10 The world was made for honest trade, — To plant and eat be none afraid. 87, 88. What poetical quality do you conceive these lines to * Read in Faneuil Hall, on December 16, 1873, the Centennial Anniversary of the Destruction of the Tea in Boston Harbor. This poem was begun several years before the war, but was not finished until the occasion of its delivery, when the piece was entirely remodelled. Some of the suppressed stanzas are given in the Riverside Edition. 11. But all trade is not always honest. See Man the Reformer, BOSTON. 11 The waves that rocked them on the deep To them their secret told ; Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep, is " Like us be free and bold ! " The honest waves refused to slaves The empire of the ocean caves. Old Europe groans with palaces, Has lords enough and more ; — 20 We plant and build by foaming seas A city of the poor ; — For day by day could Boston Bay Their honest labor overpay. We grant no dukedoms to the few, 25 We hold like rights, and shall ; — Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall, 1841, i, 220 ff . " The ways of trade are grown selfish to the borders of theft, and supple to the borders (if not beyond the borders) of fraud." Cf. iii, 244, and see The World-Soul, 16, note, p. 54. Yet " the greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade." Works and Days, vii, 159. " Thus a man may well spend many years of life in trade. It is a constant teaching of the laws of matter and mind. No dollar of property can be created without some direct communication with nature, and, of course, some acquisition of knowledge and practical force." Education, x, 128. Cf. Emerson on money, Cabot, 415; iii, 221; vi, 100, 122 ; vii, 110 ff.; ii, 221; i, 362. See Appendix, p. 86. 19. " Of old things, all are over old; Of good things, none are good enough ; — We '11 show that we can help to frame A world of other stuff." Motto to Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New Eng- land, x, 305. 25. " European critics regret the detachment of the Puritans 12 PATRIOTIC AND OCCASIONAL. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail ? 30 The noble craftsman we promote, Disown the knave and fool ; Each honest man shall have his vote, Each child shall have his school. A union then of honest men, 35 Or union never more again. The wild rose and the barberry thorn Hung out their summer pride, Where now on heated pavements worn The feet of millions stride. 40 Fair rose the planted hills behind The good town on the Bay, And where the western hills declined The prairie stretched away. What care though rival cities soar 45 Along the stormy coast, Penn's town, New York and Baltimore, If Boston knew the most ! They laughed to know the world so wide ; The mountains said, " Good-day ! so " We greet you well, you Saxon men, Up with your towns and stay ! " to this country without aristocracy; which a little reminds me of the pity of the Swiss mountaineer when shown a handsome Englishman : « What a pity he has no goitre ! ' " Boston, xii, 101. 49. Cf. " That each should in his house abide, Therefore was the world so wide." ix, 298. BOSTON. 13 The world was made for honest trade, — To plant and eat be none afraid. "For you," they said, "no barriers be, 55 For you no sluggard rest ; Each street leads downward to the sea, Or landward to the west." O happy town beside the sea, Whose roads lead everywhere to all ; go Than thine no deeper moat can be, No stouter fence, no steeper wall ! Bad news from George on the English throne ; " You are thriving well," said he ; " Now by these presents be it known 65 You shall pay us a tax on tea ; 'T is very small, — no load at all, — Honor enough that we send the call." " Not so," said Boston, " good my lord, We pay your governors here 70 63. " Bad kings and governors help us, if only they are bad enough." viii, 220. "We had many enemies and many friends in England, but our only benefactor was King George the Third. The time had arrived for the political severance of America, that it might play its part in the history of this globe ; and the way of Divine Providence to do it was to give an insane king to England. In the resistance of the colonies, he alone was immovable on the question of force. England was so dear to us that the colonies could only be absolutely united by violence from England, and only one man could compel resort to violence. . . . He insisted on the impossible ; so the army was sent. America was instantly united and the nation born." Emerson's Address