Poems / Ralph Waldo Emerson [electronic text]

THE APOLOGY * 1.1

THINK me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I Fold my arms beside the brook; Each cloud that floated in the sky Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band, For the idle flowers I brought; Every aster in my hand Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery But't is figured in the flowers; Was never secret history But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field Homeward brought the oxen strong; A second crop thine acres yield, Which I gather in a song.

Notes

• * 1.1

  THE APOLOGY. Page 119. This poem belongs to the early period of its author's Concord life. "May-Day" and the other poems of the later period, notably "Two Rivers," "Rubies" and "Waldeinsamkeit," show the gain in musical ear, the lack of which in early days he admitted.