Poems / Ralph Waldo Emerson [electronic text]

VI

POEMS OF YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD

1823-1834

THE BELL

I LOVE thy music, mellow bell, I love thine iron chime, To life or death, to heaven or hell, Which calls the sons of Time.

Thy voice upon the deep The home-bound sea-boy hails, It charms his cares to sleep, It cheers him as he sails.

To house of God and heavenly joys Thy summons called our sires, And good men thought thy sacred voice Disarmed the thunder's fires.

And soon thy music, sad death-bell, Shall lift its notes once more, And mix my requiem with the wind That sweeps my native shore.

1823

THOUGHT

I AM not poor, but I am proud, Of one inalienable right, Above the envy of the crowd,— Thought's holy light.

Better it is than gems or gold, And oh! it cannot die, But thought will glow when the sun grows cold, And mix with Deity.

Boston, 1823

PRAYER * 1.1

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.

1826 [?].

I BEAR in youth the sad infirmities That use to undo the limb and sense of age; It hath pleased Heaven to break the dream of bliss Which lit my onward way with bright presage, And my unserviceable limbs forego. The sweet delight I found in fields and farms, On windy hills, whose tops with morning glow, And lakes, smooth mirrors of Aurora's charms. Yet I think on them in the silent night, Still breaks that morn, though dim, to Memory's eye, And the firm soul does the pale train defy Of grim Disease, that would her peace affright. Please God, I'll wrap me in mine innocence, And bid each awful Muse drive the damned harpies hence.

Cambridge, 1827

BE of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know, God hath a select family of sons Now scattered wide thro' earth, and each alone, Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one By constant service to that inward law, Is weaving the sublime proportions Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and strength,

The riches of a spotless memory, The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got By searching of a clear and loving eye That seeth as God seeth. 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.

TO-DAY* 1.2

I RAKE no coffined clay, nor publish wide The resurrection of departed pride. Safe in their ancient crannies, dark and deep, Let kings and conquerors, saints and soldiers sleep— Late in the world,—too late perchance for fame, Just late enough to reap abundant blame,— I choose a novel theme, a bold abuse Of critic charters, an unlaurelled Muse.

Old mouldy men and books and names and lands Disgust my reason and defile my hands. I had as lief respect an ancient shoe, As love old things for age, and hate the new. I spurn the Past, my mind disdains its nod, Nor kneels in homage to so mean a God.

I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze, The bald antiquity of China praise. Youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend) The fault that boys and nations soonest mend.

1824

FAME * 1.3

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

THE SUMMONS * 1.4

A STERNER errand to the silken troop Has quenched the uneasy blush that warmed my cheek; I am commissioned in my day of joy To leave my woods and streams and the sweet sloth Of prayer and song that were my dear delight, To leave the rudeness of my woodland life, Sweet twilight walks and midnight solitude And kind acquaintance with the morning stars And the glad hey-day of my household hours, The innocent mirth which sweetens daily bread, Railing in love to those who rail again,

By mind's industry sharpening the love of life— Books, Muses, Study, fireside, friends and love, I loved ye with true love, so fare ye well!

I was a boy; boyhood slid gayly by And the impatient years that trod on it Taught me new lessons in the lore of life. I've learned the sum of that sad history All woman-born do know, that hoped-for days, Days that come dancing on fraught with delights, Dash our blown hopes as they limp heavily by. But I, the bantling of a country Muse, Abandon all those toys with speed to obey The King whose meek ambassador I go.

1826

THE RIVER * 1.5

AND I behold once more My old familiar haunts; here the blue river, The same blue wonder that my infant eye Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,— Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed The fragrant flag-roots in my father's fields, And where thereafter in the world he went. Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales

With his redundant waves. Here is the rock where, yet a simple child, I caught with bended pin my earliest fish, Much triumphing,—and these the fields Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly, A blooming hunter of a fairy fine. And hark! where overhead the ancient crows Hold their sour conversation in the sky:— These are the same, but I am not the same, But wiser than I was, and wise enough Not to regret the changes, tho' they cost Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb; These trees and stones are audible to me, These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind, I understand their faery syllables, And all their sad significance. The wind, That rustles down the well-known forest road— It hath a sound more eloquent than speech. The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind, All of them utter sounds of 'monishment And grave parental love. They are not of our race, they seem to say, And yet have knowledge of our moral race, And somewhat of majestic sympathy, Something of pity for the puny clay, That holds and boasts the immeasurable mind. I feel as I were welcome to these trees After long months of weary wandering, Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;

They know me as their son, for side by side, They were coeval with my ancestors, Adorned with them my country's primitive times, And soon may give my dust their funeral shade.

CONCORD, June, 1827.

GOOD HOPE * 1.6

THE cup of life is not so shallow That we have drained the best, That all the wine at once we swallow And lees make all the rest.

Maids of as soft a bloom shall marry As Hymen yet hath blessed, And fairer forms are in the quarry Than Phidias released.

1827.

LINES TO ELLEN * 1.7

TELL me, maiden, dost thou use Thyself thro' Nature to diffuse? All the angles of the coast Were tenanted by thy sweet ghost,

Bore thy colors every flower, Thine each leaf and berry bore; All wore thy badges and thy favors In their scent or in their savors, Every moth with painted wing, Every bird in carolling, The wood-boughs with thy manners waved, The rocks uphold thy name engraved, The sod throbbed friendly to my feet, And the sweet air with thee was sweet. The saffron cloud that floated warm Studied thy motion, took thy form, And in his airy road benign Recalled thy skill in bold design, Or seemed to use his privilege To gaze o'er the horizon's edge, To search where now thy beauty glowed, Or made what other purlieus proud.

1829.

SECURITY

THOUGH her eye seek other forms And a glad delight below, Yet the love the world that warms Bids for me her bosom glow.

She must love me till she find Another heart as large and true. Her soul is frank as the ocean wind, And the world has only two.

If Nature hold another heart That knows a purer flame than me, I too therein could challenge part And learn of love a new degree.

1829

A DULL uncertain brain, But gifted yet to know That God has cherubim who go Singing an immortal strain, Immortal here below. I know the mighty bards, I listen when they sing, And now I know The secret store Which these explore When they with torch of genius pierce The tenfold clouds that cover The riches of the universe From God's adoring lover.

And if to me it is not given To fetch one ingot thence Of the unfading gold of Heaven His merchants may dispense, Yet well I know the royal mine, And know the sparkle of its ore, Know Heaven's truth from lies that shine— Explored they teach us to explore.

1831.

A MOUNTAIN GRAVE * 1.8

WHY fear to die And let thy body lie Under the flowers of June, Thy body food For the ground-worms' brood And thy grave smiled on by the visiting moon.

Amid great Nature's halls Girt in by mountain walls And washed with waterfalls It would please me to die, Where every wind that swept my tomb Goes loaded with a free perfume Dealt out with a God's charity.

I should like to die in sweets, A hill's leaves for winding-sheets, And the searching sun to see That I am laid with decency. And the commissioned wind to sing His mighty psalm from fall to spring And annual tunes commemorate Of Nature's child the common fate.

WILLIAMSTOWN, VERMONT, 1 June, 1831.

A LETTER

DEAR brother, would you know the life, Please God, that I would lead? On the first wheels that quit this weary town Over yon western bridges I would ride And with a cheerful benison forsake Each street and spire and roof, incontinent. Then would I seek where God might guide my steps, Deep in a woodland tract, a sunny farm, Amid the mountain counties, Hants, Franklin, Berks, Where down the rock ravine a river roars, Even from a brook, and where old woods Not tamed and cleared cumber the ground With their centennial wrecks. Find me a slope where I can feel the sun

And mark the rising of the early stars. There will I bring my books,—my household gods, The reliquaries of my dead saint, and dwell In the sweet odor of her memory. Then in the uncouth solitude unlock My stock of art, plant dials in the grass, Hang in the air a bright thermometer And aim a telescope at the inviolate sun.

CHARDON ST., BOSTON, 1831.

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.

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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.

HYMN * 1.9

THERE is in all the sons of men A love that in the spirit dwells, That panteth after things unseen, And tidings of the future tells.

And God hath built his altar here To keep this fire of faith alive, And sent his priests in holy fear To speak the truth—for truth to strive.

And hither come the pensive train Of rich and poor, of young and old, Of ardent youth untouched by pain, Of thoughtful maids and manhood bold.

They seek a friend to speak the word Already trembling on their tongue, To touch with prophet's hand the chord Which God in human hearts hath strung.

To speak the plain reproof of sin That sounded in the soul before, And bid you let the angels in That knock at meek contrition's door.

A friend to lift the curtain up That hides from man the mortal goal, And with glad thoughts of faith and hope Surprise the exulting soul.

Sole source of light and hope assured, O touch thy servant's lips with power, So shall he speak to us the word Thyself dost give forever more.

June, 1831.

SELF-RELIANCE * 1.10

HENCEFORTH, please God, forever I forego The yoke of men's opinions. I will be Light-hearted as a bird, and live with God. I find him in the bottom of my heart, I hear continually his voice therein.

horizontal dotted line

The little needle always knows the North, The little bird remembereth his note, And this wise Seer within me never errs. I never taught it what it teaches me; I only follow, when I act aright.

October 9, 1832.

AND when I am entombèd in my place, Be it remembered of a single man, He never, though he dearly loved his race, For fear of human eyes swerved from his plan.

OH what is Heaven but the fellowship Of minds that each can stand against the world By its own meek and incorruptible will?

THE days pass over me And I am still the same; The aroma of my life is gone With the flower with which it came.

1833.

WRITTEN IN NAPLES * 1.11

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 hillside, 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 roadside, and beneath Peep the blue violets out of the black loam, Pathetic silent poets that sing to me Thine elegy, sweet singer, sainted wife.

March, 1833

WRITTEN AT ROME

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.

1833

WEBSTER * 1.12

1831

LET Webster's lofty face Ever on thousands shine, A beacon set that Freedom's race Might gather omens from that radiant sign.

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.

1854

WHY did all manly gifts in Webster fail? He wrote on Nature's grandest brow, For Sale.

Notes

• * 1.1

  PRAYER. Page 380. The incident of the hayfield where the Methodist haymaker said to Emerson, raking hay beside him on his uncle's farm, that men are always praying, and that all prayers are granted, which gave him the subject of his first sermon, is told in Mr. Cabot's Memoir. It seems to have suggested lines in this poem.
• * 1.2

  TO-DAY. Page 382. Dr. Holmes has named Mr. Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa Address in 1837 as "Our intellectual Declaration of Independence," but this boyish poem, written thirteen years earlier, shows the germ which grew into the "American Scholar."
• * 1.3

  FAME. Page 383. This bit of youthful irony on a theme which, even in college, its author often wrote upon, "Being and Seeming," was very possibly playfully addressed to one of his brothers, or, it may be, to himself.
• * 1.4

  THE SUMMONS. Page 384. In the year 1822, Mr. Emerson wrote to a classmate:

  "I am (I wish I was otherwise) keeping a school, and assisting my venerable brother to lift the truncheon against the fair-haired daughters of this raw city.... Better tug at the oar,... or saw wood,... better sow hemp, or hang with it, than sow the seeds of instruction!"

  Next year matters were worse, for William went abroad, leaving him the school,—a formidable experience for a shy youth, still a minor, and younger than some of his fair and troublesome pupils. The

  "Good-bye, proud world"

  was his utterance of relief when he fled from them. They were the

  "silken troop,"

  skilful in producing his

  "uneasy blush"

  alluded to in the present poem. Now he was to have the pulpit for a breastwork, for in 1826 he was approbated to preach.

  It is interesting to see that the image of the procession of Days, so often used later, was already in his thought.
• * 1.5

  THE RIVER. Page 385. In the same month in which these lines were written, their author told his brother, in a letter, that he meditated abdicating the profession, for

  "the lungs in their spiteful lobes sing sexton and sorrow whenever I only ask them to shout a sermon for me."

  The poem was evidently written in the beautiful orchid running down to the Concord River behind the Manse.
• * 1.6

  GOOD HOPE. Page 387. These verses show reviving life, and very likely were written when, in December, 1827, the young minister, going to Concord, New Hampshire, to preach, first saw Ellen Tucker, a beautiful girl of seventeen.
• * 1.7

  LINES TO ELLEN. Page 387. A year from the time when he first saw Miss Tucker, Mr. Emerson again went to Concord, New Hampshire, and soon after became engaged to her.
• * 1.8

  A MOUNTAIN GRAVE. Page 390. After the death of his wife, and during the time when the enlargement of his mental horizon made Mr. Emerson regard the forms in use in the church with increasing repugnance, his health again underwent severe strain, and his future became very uncertain, as the next two poems show.
• * 1.9

  HYMN. Page 393. In the main body of this volume is printed the hymn,

  We love the venerable houseOur fathers built to God,

  which was sung at the ordination of Rev. Chandler Robbins, Mr. Emerson's successor. The hymn here printed was probably the first trial for a fit utterance for that occasion.
• * 1.10

  SELF-RELIANCE. Page 394. These lines, without title, however, were written at the time when he resigned his place as pastor of the Second Church.

  Mr. Emerson's friend, Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, relates that when they were making the home voyage from England together in 1873, Mr. Emerson showed him his pocket-compass, which he said he carried with him in travelling, and added,

  "I like to hold the god in my hands."
• * 1.11

  NAPLES and ROME. Pages 395 and 396. Journal, Divinity Hall, November, 1827.

  "Don't you see you are the Universe to yourself? You carry your fortunes in your own hand. Change of place won't mend the matter. You will weave the same web at Pernambuco as at Boston, if you have only learned how to make one texture."

  Journal, 1834.

  "Remember the Sunday morning in Naples when I said, 'This moment is the truest vision, the beat spectacle I have seen amid all the wonders; and this moment, this vision, I might have had in my own closet in Boston.'"

  "Oar first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go."

  — Self-Reliance.
• * 1.12

  WEBSTER. Page 398. The first of these fragments on New England's idol — until his apostasy to the cause of human Freedom, in the interests of Union—was the last verse of those beginning,

  Has God on thee conferredA bodily presence mean as Paul's,

  printed a few pages earlier in this book. The second was the best passage in the Phi Beta Kappa poem, not otherwise remarkable. The third was written sadly after Webster's death.