Poems / Ralph Waldo Emerson [electronic text]

NOTES

[notes]

MAY-DAY

In 1867, Mr. Emerson gathered into a new volume the poems of the twenty-one years since the publication of the first, and gave it the name May-Day from the happy lyric in honor of Spring with which it opens. His ear had improved, and, though the original vigor remained in the poems, many of them had been kept long by him and had ripened fully. "May-Day," the poem, was probably written in snatches in the woods on his afternoon walks, through many years. Some lines are in journals of 1845. After its publication he saw that the ordering of the different passages to give the advance of Spring was not quite successful, and in the Selected Poems, published nine years later, he improved, but did not quite perfect, the arrangement, for at that time he found mental effort of that sort confusing. Therefore in the posthumous edition of the Poems in 1883, at the suggestion of the present editor, Mr. Cabot consented to a slight further change made with the same intent.

ELEMENTS AND MOTTOES

QUATRAINS AND TRANSLATIONS

APPENDIX

POEMS OF YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD

As was said in the Preface, these verses are printed, not for their poetical merit, but as showing the influence, on Mr. Emerson's character, thought and expression, of the sad and the happy events of the third decade of his life. Only a reserve in his strength that could hardly have been expected, together with the serenity of his nature, which was content to wait until the storm blew by, preserved his life during this period with disease ever threatening when it was not actually disabling him. After his establishment of his home in Concord and his second marriage, his health was almost uniformly good, in spite of the very serious exposure involved in his winter lecturing journeys afar, for the remainder of his life.

Notes

• The notes that were printed in this section have been moved "inline" by the HTI by moving them to their point of reference. Pagination that does not appear here has been moved along with the NOTE that contained it.
• The notes that were printed in this section have been moved "inline" by the HTI by moving them to their point of reference. Pagination that does not appear here has been moved along with the NOTE that contained it.
• The notes that were printed in this section have been moved "inline" by the HTI by moving them to their point of reference. Pagination that does not appear here has been moved along with the NOTE that contained it.
• The notes that were printed in this section have been moved "inline" by the HTI by moving them to their point of reference. Pagination that does not appear here has been moved along with the NOTE that contained it.
• The notes that were printed in this section have been moved "inline" by the HTI by moving them to their point of reference. Pagination that does not appear here has been moved along with the NOTE that contained it.
• The notes that were printed in this section have been moved "inline" by the HTI by moving them to their point of reference. Pagination that does not appear here has been moved along with the NOTE that contained it.