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Essays and Poems
Essays and Poems, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
Biographies of the authors
Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
Footnotes and endnotes
Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors
Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
Bibliographies for further reading
Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
As an adolescent America searched for its unique identity among the nations of the world, a number of thinkers and writers emerged eager to share their vision of what the American character could be. Among their leaders was Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays, lectures, and poems defined the American transcendentalist movement, though he himself disliked the term.
Emerson advocates a rejection of fear-driven conformity, a total independence of thought and spirit, and a life lived in harmony with nature. He believes that Truth lies within each individual, for each is part of a greater whole, a universal “over-soul” through which we transcend the merely mortal.
Emerson was extremely prolific throughout his life; his collected writings fill forty volumes. This edition contains his major works, including Nature, the essays “Self-Reliance,” “The American Scholar,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” “The Poet,” and “Experience,”, and such important poems as “The Rhodora,” “Uriel,” “The Humble-Bee,” “Earth-Song,” “Give All to Love,” and the well-loved “Concord Hymn.”
Includes a comprehensive glossary of names.
Peter Norberg has been Assistant Professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia since 1997. A specialist in New England transcendentalism and the history of the antebellum period, he also has published on Herman Melville’s poetry. He currently is writing a history of Emerson’s career as a public lecturer.
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
Biographies of the authors
Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
Footnotes and endnotes
Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors
Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
Bibliographies for further reading
Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
As an adolescent America searched for its unique identity among the nations of the world, a number of thinkers and writers emerged eager to share their vision of what the American character could be. Among their leaders was Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays, lectures, and poems defined the American transcendentalist movement, though he himself disliked the term.
Emerson advocates a rejection of fear-driven conformity, a total independence of thought and spirit, and a life lived in harmony with nature. He believes that Truth lies within each individual, for each is part of a greater whole, a universal “over-soul” through which we transcend the merely mortal.
Emerson was extremely prolific throughout his life; his collected writings fill forty volumes. This edition contains his major works, including Nature, the essays “Self-Reliance,” “The American Scholar,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” “The Poet,” and “Experience,”, and such important poems as “The Rhodora,” “Uriel,” “The Humble-Bee,” “Earth-Song,” “Give All to Love,” and the well-loved “Concord Hymn.”
Includes a comprehensive glossary of names.
Peter Norberg has been Assistant Professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia since 1997. A specialist in New England transcendentalism and the history of the antebellum period, he also has published on Herman Melville’s poetry. He currently is writing a history of Emerson’s career as a public lecturer.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1856
340 people are currently reading
10653 people want to read
About the author
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3,479 books5,401 followersRalph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.
The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.
The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
November 1, 2019
Book Review
I had read Emerson’s works once before and I hated it at first reaction always. Well, I decided to read it thoroughly and try to understand it. I was utterly amazed. He had such profound and wonderful things to say. I honestly was deeply touched. I decided to write down everything I got from his piece. It is in very fragmented thoughts, so it may not be in grammatically correct sentences. Well, here goes...
Look through our eyes today and not through someone’s from the past. All questions have answers. It is true in nature also. Nature just exists. It is abstract truth. Look at nature as a collective thing - not individual things. Going into nature you become one with it and with yourself. Removed from civilization, you can truly absorb all nature has to offer. Not as a man with biased opinion and view, but like a child free from corrupting suggestions. Free-ness from others opinions - on your own.
We are changing, but not by choice. Go with flow and claim independence (from England). We have grown too far apart from one another. Unity has slowly begun to disappear and therefore, men, too individualistic, are no longer complete. We are so defined by what we do - our occupations. This is bad. Scholar means intellect. Be a student and learn. He is too far separated from the other “men.” Life, in nature, as a scholar, is like a circle. No beginning. No end. Order is so complete. Learning is the main focus of scholars and do it through organization and order. We all take things to mean “know thyself, study nature.” Influences on scholar are (1) nature, (2) past - through books, etc., (3) self-action. What you know and take in may not be what you get out of the book. Changes will always occur. Adapt to them. Don’t just accept what you read. Decipher a meaning out of it for yourself. Souls see the truth. You must reach down deep and touch your soul. It won’t and can’t always be easy. Working hard helps you discover your answers. The past literature can always hit your soul and explain your life today to you. The general knowledge we learn and dislike to learn helps us to create ideas and such for us. When you let something pass you by without learning it or catching it, you lose some power.
Everything will take off at one time or another. Don’t stop things from growing. Learn from your life experience. Live a little. Become the thinker. Sometimes you can’t change things, you must accept them the way that they are. We will never learn absolutely everything, for there are barriers. Let yourself go and be open. Tell people who you truly are and be open to accept them. As a boy we have the old world classical thoughts. As a youth, romantic ones, and as an adult, we are reflective. Explore the “common.” Today explains the past and the future. The individual is important. World is nothing. Man is all. Get away from Europe. This is what Emerson has to say in a nutshell.
I was amazed and inspired by his words. I am looking forward to Thoreau, another man I thought to be not very interesting. Maybe, I will have to start really reading things quickly.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.
I had read Emerson’s works once before and I hated it at first reaction always. Well, I decided to read it thoroughly and try to understand it. I was utterly amazed. He had such profound and wonderful things to say. I honestly was deeply touched. I decided to write down everything I got from his piece. It is in very fragmented thoughts, so it may not be in grammatically correct sentences. Well, here goes...
Look through our eyes today and not through someone’s from the past. All questions have answers. It is true in nature also. Nature just exists. It is abstract truth. Look at nature as a collective thing - not individual things. Going into nature you become one with it and with yourself. Removed from civilization, you can truly absorb all nature has to offer. Not as a man with biased opinion and view, but like a child free from corrupting suggestions. Free-ness from others opinions - on your own.
We are changing, but not by choice. Go with flow and claim independence (from England). We have grown too far apart from one another. Unity has slowly begun to disappear and therefore, men, too individualistic, are no longer complete. We are so defined by what we do - our occupations. This is bad. Scholar means intellect. Be a student and learn. He is too far separated from the other “men.” Life, in nature, as a scholar, is like a circle. No beginning. No end. Order is so complete. Learning is the main focus of scholars and do it through organization and order. We all take things to mean “know thyself, study nature.” Influences on scholar are (1) nature, (2) past - through books, etc., (3) self-action. What you know and take in may not be what you get out of the book. Changes will always occur. Adapt to them. Don’t just accept what you read. Decipher a meaning out of it for yourself. Souls see the truth. You must reach down deep and touch your soul. It won’t and can’t always be easy. Working hard helps you discover your answers. The past literature can always hit your soul and explain your life today to you. The general knowledge we learn and dislike to learn helps us to create ideas and such for us. When you let something pass you by without learning it or catching it, you lose some power.
Everything will take off at one time or another. Don’t stop things from growing. Learn from your life experience. Live a little. Become the thinker. Sometimes you can’t change things, you must accept them the way that they are. We will never learn absolutely everything, for there are barriers. Let yourself go and be open. Tell people who you truly are and be open to accept them. As a boy we have the old world classical thoughts. As a youth, romantic ones, and as an adult, we are reflective. Explore the “common.” Today explains the past and the future. The individual is important. World is nothing. Man is all. Get away from Europe. This is what Emerson has to say in a nutshell.
I was amazed and inspired by his words. I am looking forward to Thoreau, another man I thought to be not very interesting. Maybe, I will have to start really reading things quickly.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.
March 10, 2009
great works are timeless. sometimes the right book finds you at the right time and makes everything ok.
June 9, 2019
Okay first of all, the template of the pages of this book is just absolutely divine! It makes the pages look like scrolls of long ago. I wish I could show you pictures! Beautiful bordering and illustrations that I wouldn't necessarily call beautiful themselves but add a certain ambience to the essays and poems written within.
This is definitely a must for anyone's library!
This is definitely a must for anyone's library!
January 30, 2023
Emerson is an American prophet and is the genius behind the Transcendentalist movement. He foresaw the spiritual renaissance, the direction that America was heading in and was ahead of his time in how he saw religion (as opposed to how the masses saw it) as were all the Transcendentalists with him. Unfortunately, his writing suffers from his overwrought style. It just does not hold up and is cumbersome, very difficult to get through. Where his genius really comes through is where it is tightly woven, like in a perfect sentence or group of sentences, where his writing becomes austere and wise. I also love his response to the Abolitionist movement, which is that he thought that it mattered not if society changes, but the individual does not change.
"All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves."
"All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves."
June 17, 2009
This is astounding. There is a reason why Emerson's words show up on everything from bookmarks to refridgerator magnets. They're pristine and profound. Some of these essays will stay with you long after you read them, as they reach far into your head and heart and demand you to be honest with yourself. The poetry is a little less, but still far reaching.
This is astounding. There is a reason why Emerson's words show up on everything from bookmarks to refridgerator magnets. They're pristine and profound. Some of these essays will stay with you long after you read them, as they reach far into your head and heart and demand you to be honest with yourself. The poetry is a little less, but still far reaching.
This is astounding. There is a reason why Emerson's words show up on everything from bookmarks to refridgerator magnets. They're pristine and profound. Some of these essays will stay with you long after you read them, as they reach far into your head and heart and demand you to be honest with yourself. The poetry is a little less, but still far reaching.
May 29, 2025
“A great poet who appears in illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light which is any where radiating.” (Shakespeare; or, The Poet)
Even though he talks too much, Emerson reminds us that nature controls our fate and that we should seek her guidance out if we want to be great men. He also speaks to the values of self-reliance, and how if something isn’t right in the world, it is up to us to ignore those unjust laws and rules and act in accordance with what is right in our heart and mind.
Even though he talks too much, Emerson reminds us that nature controls our fate and that we should seek her guidance out if we want to be great men. He also speaks to the values of self-reliance, and how if something isn’t right in the world, it is up to us to ignore those unjust laws and rules and act in accordance with what is right in our heart and mind.
May 25, 2015
Great excerpts from his speeches on the evolution of man's skill, the inspiration and limitation of books, the importance of direct experience, how memories evolve with time, trusting our instincts and being ourselves.
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius."
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession."
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius."
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession."
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
May 31, 2015
In school I just learned about Ralph Waldo Emerson the poet. They never taught about him as a thinker and philosopher. This book was amazing. The man was an absolute genius. I highly recommend reading this to gain a wider vision of life.
Currently reading
July 7, 2011A book I will probably always be reading. It's full of such great wisdom that to say," I'm done," with this work would be a travesty.
July 13, 2018
Every single word in this BOOK by Ralph is truly magical and touched my soul too. Everyone like me can learn a true meaning of all expressions and feelings in its best way!
March 21, 2014
This is one of those books destined to remain with us for a lifetime. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get to the marrow of life without fear.
January 30, 2021
If we will take
The good we find, asking
No questions, we
Shall have heaping measures.
------------------------------
To speak truly, few
adult persons can see
nature. Most persons
do not see the sun.
At least they have
a very superficial seeing.
The sun illuminates
only the eyes of the man, but
shines into the eye
and the heart of the child.
The lover of nature
is he whose inward
and outward senses
are still truly adjusted
to each other and
a wild delight
runs through,
despite real sorrows.
A year of pandemic isolation seems like a good year to read the original works of some writers who inspired many of my favorite writers, and as expected, reading Emerson was sublime and subdued at the same time. I turned some of his prose into poetry to make it more intelligible, and some of his essays were perfectly unreadable. Not because of the archaic language but perhaps because what he was saying is now commonplace, part of the fabric of who we are, or who I am, that is seems tedious and too much about politics and individuality, when I am after the experience in nature and the feelings and thoughts that engenders.
The poetry was also mediocre so I did do an internet dive and found some more meaningful and powerful stuff; I can’t believe I have never read Threnody, a lament for the death of his young son; it floored me and I cried a small pond. Emerson changed the face of American poetry, inspiring Dickinson and Whitman, and I sense William Stafford, Wendell Berry and Ted Kooser here too; and Jorie Graham, Marie Howe, and even Mary Oliver. I think that we/they have all been transformed by the landscape of America and Emerson led the way.
----------------------------------------------------
Our age is retrospective. It writes
Biographies, histories and criticism.
The foregoing generations beheld
God and nature face to face;
We, through their eyes.
Why
Should
We
Not
Also
Enjoy
An
Original
Relation
To
The
Universe?
Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
Every mans’ condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries.
------------------------------
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations! The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always presents, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred expression , when the mind is open to their influence.
-----------------------------
The eye is the best
Of artists. By the
Mutual action of
Its structure and of the
Laws of light,
Perspective
Is produced, which
Integrates
Into a landscape.
Intense light will make
Any landscape
Beautiful,
And the stimulus
It affords to the sense
And a sort of
Infinitude,
Which it hath,
like space and time,
Make all matter
Beauty.
--------------------------
Nature satisfies by its loveliness,
I see the spectacle of morning
From the hilltop, from daybreak
To sunrise, with emotions which
An angel might share. The long
Slender bones of cloud float
Like fishes in the sea of crimson
Light. From the earth as a shore, I
Look out into that silent sea.
I seem to partake its rapid
Transformations: the active
Enchantment reaches my dust,
and I dilate and conspire with the
morning wind. How does nature
deify us with a few and cheap elements?
Give me health and a day, and I
Will make the pomp of emperors
Ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria, the
sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos,
and unimaginable realms of faerie;
broad noon shall be my England of
the senses and the understanding;
the night shall be my Germany
of mystic philosophy and dreams.
----------------------------
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps,
Is,
Because man us disunited with himself. He cannot be a naturalist,
Until
He satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much its demand,
As
Perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other. In the
Uttermost
Meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought.
Deep
Calls unto Deep.
--------------------------
The first in time and the first in
Importance of the influences
Upon the mind is that of nature.
Every day, the sun; and after
Sunset, night and her stars.
Ever the winds blow; ever the
Grass grows. Every day, men
And women, conversing,
Beholding, and beholden.
The scholar is he of all men
Whom this spectacle most engages.
What is nature to me? There is
Never a beginning, there is never
An end, to the inexplicable
Continuity of this web of God,
But always circular power
Returning into itself. Therein
It resembles his own spirits, whose
Beginning, whose ending, he
Never can find,-so entire,
So boundless.
----------------------------
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs;
Is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these
As hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect of the will, but the master
Of the intellect and the will; is the vast background of our being,
In which they lie, an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
From within or from behind,
a light shines through us
upon things, and makes us aware
We are nothing, but the light is all.
A man is the façade of the temple where
in all wisdom and all good abide.
=========================================
We cannot write the order of the variable winds. How can
We penetrate the law of our shifting moods and
Susceptibility? Instead of the firmament
Of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is today
An eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see
What or where our stars of destiny are. From day to day,
The capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes.
Suddenly the mist rolls up, and reveals them, and we think
How much good time is gone that might have been saved…
A sudden rise in the road shows us the system of mountains,
And all the summits, which have been just as near us
All the year, but quite out of mind. If life seem a succession
Of dreams, yet poetic justice is done in dreams also.
_____________________________
The Snow-storm
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
________________________
On being asked, whence is the flower.
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
------------------------------------------
All that's good and great with thee
Stands in deep conspiracy.
Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely
To report thy features only,
And the cold and purple morning
Itself with thoughts of thee adorning,
The leafy dell, the city mart,
Equal trophies of thine art,
E'en the flowing azure air
Thou hast touched for my despair,
And if I languish into dreams,
Again I meet the ardent beams.
Queen of things! I dare not die
In Being's deeps past ear and eye,
Lest there I find the same deceiver,
And be the sport of Fate forever.
Dread power, but dear! if God thou be,
Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me.
____________________________
For this present, hard
Is the fortune of the bard
Born out of time;
All his accomplishment
From nature's utmost treasure spent
Booteth not him.
When the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
He speeds to the woodland walks,
To birds and trees he talks.
---
What he knows, nobody wants.
In the wood he travels glad
Without better fortune had,
Melancholy without bad.
Planter of celestial plants,
What he knows, nobody wants,—
What he knows, he hides, not vaunts.
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest,
Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,
Grass buds, and caterpillars' shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet's petal,
Why nature loves the number five,
And why the star-form she repeats,
Lover of all things alive,
Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself,—
Who can tell him what he is,
Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities?
----
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth; — his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.
-------------------------------------------
We cannot learn the cipher
That's writ upon our cell,
Stars help us by a mystery
Which we could never spell.
--
Within, without, the idle earth
Stars weave eternal rings,
The sun himself shines heartily,
And shares the joy he brings.
--
The seeds of land and sea
Are the atoms of his body bright,
And his behest obey.
---
Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers,
I see the summer glow,
And through the wild-piled snowdrift
The warm rose buds below.
----------------------------------
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.
'Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But 'tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
'Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such 'twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
_____________________
Threnody (Lament)
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
---
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature circling go?
Nail the star struggling to its track
On the half-climbed Zodiack?
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,—
Wilt thou transfix and make it none,
Its onward stream too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament?
---
Some went and came about the dead,
And some in books of solace read,
Some to their friends the tidings say,
Some went to write, some went to pray,
One tarried here, there hurried one,
But their heart abode with none.
The good we find, asking
No questions, we
Shall have heaping measures.
------------------------------
To speak truly, few
adult persons can see
nature. Most persons
do not see the sun.
At least they have
a very superficial seeing.
The sun illuminates
only the eyes of the man, but
shines into the eye
and the heart of the child.
The lover of nature
is he whose inward
and outward senses
are still truly adjusted
to each other and
a wild delight
runs through,
despite real sorrows.
A year of pandemic isolation seems like a good year to read the original works of some writers who inspired many of my favorite writers, and as expected, reading Emerson was sublime and subdued at the same time. I turned some of his prose into poetry to make it more intelligible, and some of his essays were perfectly unreadable. Not because of the archaic language but perhaps because what he was saying is now commonplace, part of the fabric of who we are, or who I am, that is seems tedious and too much about politics and individuality, when I am after the experience in nature and the feelings and thoughts that engenders.
The poetry was also mediocre so I did do an internet dive and found some more meaningful and powerful stuff; I can’t believe I have never read Threnody, a lament for the death of his young son; it floored me and I cried a small pond. Emerson changed the face of American poetry, inspiring Dickinson and Whitman, and I sense William Stafford, Wendell Berry and Ted Kooser here too; and Jorie Graham, Marie Howe, and even Mary Oliver. I think that we/they have all been transformed by the landscape of America and Emerson led the way.
----------------------------------------------------
Our age is retrospective. It writes
Biographies, histories and criticism.
The foregoing generations beheld
God and nature face to face;
We, through their eyes.
Why
Should
We
Not
Also
Enjoy
An
Original
Relation
To
The
Universe?
Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
Every mans’ condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries.
------------------------------
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations! The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always presents, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred expression , when the mind is open to their influence.
-----------------------------
The eye is the best
Of artists. By the
Mutual action of
Its structure and of the
Laws of light,
Perspective
Is produced, which
Integrates
Into a landscape.
Intense light will make
Any landscape
Beautiful,
And the stimulus
It affords to the sense
And a sort of
Infinitude,
Which it hath,
like space and time,
Make all matter
Beauty.
--------------------------
Nature satisfies by its loveliness,
I see the spectacle of morning
From the hilltop, from daybreak
To sunrise, with emotions which
An angel might share. The long
Slender bones of cloud float
Like fishes in the sea of crimson
Light. From the earth as a shore, I
Look out into that silent sea.
I seem to partake its rapid
Transformations: the active
Enchantment reaches my dust,
and I dilate and conspire with the
morning wind. How does nature
deify us with a few and cheap elements?
Give me health and a day, and I
Will make the pomp of emperors
Ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria, the
sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos,
and unimaginable realms of faerie;
broad noon shall be my England of
the senses and the understanding;
the night shall be my Germany
of mystic philosophy and dreams.
----------------------------
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps,
Is,
Because man us disunited with himself. He cannot be a naturalist,
Until
He satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much its demand,
As
Perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other. In the
Uttermost
Meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought.
Deep
Calls unto Deep.
--------------------------
The first in time and the first in
Importance of the influences
Upon the mind is that of nature.
Every day, the sun; and after
Sunset, night and her stars.
Ever the winds blow; ever the
Grass grows. Every day, men
And women, conversing,
Beholding, and beholden.
The scholar is he of all men
Whom this spectacle most engages.
What is nature to me? There is
Never a beginning, there is never
An end, to the inexplicable
Continuity of this web of God,
But always circular power
Returning into itself. Therein
It resembles his own spirits, whose
Beginning, whose ending, he
Never can find,-so entire,
So boundless.
----------------------------
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs;
Is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these
As hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect of the will, but the master
Of the intellect and the will; is the vast background of our being,
In which they lie, an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
From within or from behind,
a light shines through us
upon things, and makes us aware
We are nothing, but the light is all.
A man is the façade of the temple where
in all wisdom and all good abide.
=========================================
We cannot write the order of the variable winds. How can
We penetrate the law of our shifting moods and
Susceptibility? Instead of the firmament
Of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is today
An eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see
What or where our stars of destiny are. From day to day,
The capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes.
Suddenly the mist rolls up, and reveals them, and we think
How much good time is gone that might have been saved…
A sudden rise in the road shows us the system of mountains,
And all the summits, which have been just as near us
All the year, but quite out of mind. If life seem a succession
Of dreams, yet poetic justice is done in dreams also.
_____________________________
The Snow-storm
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
________________________
On being asked, whence is the flower.
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
------------------------------------------
All that's good and great with thee
Stands in deep conspiracy.
Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely
To report thy features only,
And the cold and purple morning
Itself with thoughts of thee adorning,
The leafy dell, the city mart,
Equal trophies of thine art,
E'en the flowing azure air
Thou hast touched for my despair,
And if I languish into dreams,
Again I meet the ardent beams.
Queen of things! I dare not die
In Being's deeps past ear and eye,
Lest there I find the same deceiver,
And be the sport of Fate forever.
Dread power, but dear! if God thou be,
Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me.
____________________________
For this present, hard
Is the fortune of the bard
Born out of time;
All his accomplishment
From nature's utmost treasure spent
Booteth not him.
When the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
He speeds to the woodland walks,
To birds and trees he talks.
---
What he knows, nobody wants.
In the wood he travels glad
Without better fortune had,
Melancholy without bad.
Planter of celestial plants,
What he knows, nobody wants,—
What he knows, he hides, not vaunts.
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest,
Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,
Grass buds, and caterpillars' shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet's petal,
Why nature loves the number five,
And why the star-form she repeats,
Lover of all things alive,
Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself,—
Who can tell him what he is,
Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities?
----
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth; — his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.
-------------------------------------------
We cannot learn the cipher
That's writ upon our cell,
Stars help us by a mystery
Which we could never spell.
--
Within, without, the idle earth
Stars weave eternal rings,
The sun himself shines heartily,
And shares the joy he brings.
--
The seeds of land and sea
Are the atoms of his body bright,
And his behest obey.
---
Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers,
I see the summer glow,
And through the wild-piled snowdrift
The warm rose buds below.
----------------------------------
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.
'Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But 'tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
'Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such 'twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
_____________________
Threnody (Lament)
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
---
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature circling go?
Nail the star struggling to its track
On the half-climbed Zodiack?
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,—
Wilt thou transfix and make it none,
Its onward stream too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament?
---
Some went and came about the dead,
And some in books of solace read,
Some to their friends the tidings say,
Some went to write, some went to pray,
One tarried here, there hurried one,
But their heart abode with none.
January 10, 2021
Emerson was an early love of mine. I read Emerson every day for at least a half dozen years. Only problem with transcendentalism is that when you annex nature to the soul, it doesn’t necessarily lead to environmentalism. It can lead to a monstrous self that swallows up and subsumes all of nature, “that other me”. Historically the doctrine coincided with manifest destiny, the notion it was the destiny of America to colonize the continent. Parts of the transcendentalist doctrine underwrite this even if Emerson was appalled by colonial violence of “Indian removal”.
As soon as you remove nature’s essential difference and subscribe to a full-blown monism, it is not irrational to argue you can do anything with it you want because nature is merely an extension of your gigantic “Soul” . . . That is not Emerson’s only legacy by any means. Thoreau and Muir, the park system, can be traced from his movement . . . and I think Emerson is a unique genius whose incredible writing is not reducible to the spurious doctrine of transcendentalism. His essay “Experience” is especially brilliant and all his other essays are great. Many are just heavily infused with the strong intoxicant of bad metaphysics . . . Perhaps he needed this to find his ecstatic and affirmative voice . . . but with Emerson you have to take the sublime with the hyperbolic.
As soon as you remove nature’s essential difference and subscribe to a full-blown monism, it is not irrational to argue you can do anything with it you want because nature is merely an extension of your gigantic “Soul” . . . That is not Emerson’s only legacy by any means. Thoreau and Muir, the park system, can be traced from his movement . . . and I think Emerson is a unique genius whose incredible writing is not reducible to the spurious doctrine of transcendentalism. His essay “Experience” is especially brilliant and all his other essays are great. Many are just heavily infused with the strong intoxicant of bad metaphysics . . . Perhaps he needed this to find his ecstatic and affirmative voice . . . but with Emerson you have to take the sublime with the hyperbolic.
January 20, 2021
Though he would refute imitation, Emerson often sounds Socratic in his writing about philosophy, though that comparison only stands in tone not content. What you have here is a collection of “translations” of what you already know down inside about your own potential for originality, but adding to the deep history and wellspring of texts for creatives to pull on Emerson articulates it in a way that is definitely his own.
Foundational as an approach to naturalism and ever inspiring, a few of my favorite essays were: History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Heroism, Intellect, The Poet, Manners, and Politics.
Some of his essays on love and reformers I found cute but not entirely as universal and applicable as I would have expected. The naturalist approach to all art might be challenged today as very cooperate and commercial products have made the high-art/low-art distinction more drastic, but we’ll never know Ralph’s opinion on that.
Foundational as an approach to naturalism and ever inspiring, a few of my favorite essays were: History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Heroism, Intellect, The Poet, Manners, and Politics.
Some of his essays on love and reformers I found cute but not entirely as universal and applicable as I would have expected. The naturalist approach to all art might be challenged today as very cooperate and commercial products have made the high-art/low-art distinction more drastic, but we’ll never know Ralph’s opinion on that.
December 1, 2021
Emerson is a wonderful writer and Peter Norberg does a great job annotating his rich essays. The prose is always electric. I do think Emerson is dangerously heterodox. He was banned from the Harvard Divinity School for decades. I think his philosophy, of finding revelation in a direct encounter with Nature, is a culmination of Protestantism. Protestantism seeks direct access to God, so why even bother with the Bible, since it has human writers? Emerson actually says we need to put both Jesus and Judas aside. He says he will act from the devil if that is authentic. I don't think this evolution of dogma leads to a good place. Emerson is the quintessential modernist, as articulated by Pope Pius X in his great encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis.
partially-read
October 19, 2023Read "Experience" and "Circles" for Kenosis.
August 3, 2009
From Self-Reliance:
"There is one mind common among all men."
"I would write on the lintels of my doorpost: Whim."
"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature"
--------------
May 2009 inscription:
I fell for **** this month and have constructed an entire imaginary future - is this wrong to entertain? Frustrating, yes, but wrong? I look at @@@ and know I really do like being with him, but want **** too.
August 2009 inscription:
**** and I went on a scooter trip on Friday to start the perfect long weekend with a perfect day. It was sunny, a first for the past month of July was only briefly punctuated with sun amidst a Dostoevsky-like text of rain. We went out to Limehouse, Ontario - climbed a tree and laid in a field of clover. I read him Jeanette Winterson while he laid on his back and smoked Djarum cigarettes. We laid in the field with the sun beating down on us until we were well roasted and decided to leave for a nearby quarry/pond to cool off. Floating on our backs in the pond we watched the clouds or swam among the ripples of light the sun made with each subtle movement spreading in wide arches around us. He was swimming around with his white bum popping above the dark surface here and there, and I felt all "one love" with the trees, the water, and the mossy beards that randomly floated up from the bottom and puffed out into thousands of brown dandelion parachutes as they brushed against you. I felt naturally and creatively part of the scene and with ****. As we laid in the tall grass drying off, the ants bit our feet. I could have rolled over and been directly in his arms and felt totally right there. Instead I read him pieces of Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America as I rubbed a wheat weed across his legs to dissuade the ants. Riding home I felt my hand on his chest just below his heart - holding him lightly as we sped through the fields down empty country roads. I didn't want to leave the moment. A moment where the side of the road vanishes into grass, then into field, where the scooter sways with the wind and the winding road - his body and mine are one with every gentle movement. I didn't want to think past the moment or about a time when my hand would not rest on his chest just below his heart.
"To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius." (Self-Reliance)
"There is one mind common among all men."
"I would write on the lintels of my doorpost: Whim."
"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature"
--------------
May 2009 inscription:
I fell for **** this month and have constructed an entire imaginary future - is this wrong to entertain? Frustrating, yes, but wrong? I look at @@@ and know I really do like being with him, but want **** too.
August 2009 inscription:
**** and I went on a scooter trip on Friday to start the perfect long weekend with a perfect day. It was sunny, a first for the past month of July was only briefly punctuated with sun amidst a Dostoevsky-like text of rain. We went out to Limehouse, Ontario - climbed a tree and laid in a field of clover. I read him Jeanette Winterson while he laid on his back and smoked Djarum cigarettes. We laid in the field with the sun beating down on us until we were well roasted and decided to leave for a nearby quarry/pond to cool off. Floating on our backs in the pond we watched the clouds or swam among the ripples of light the sun made with each subtle movement spreading in wide arches around us. He was swimming around with his white bum popping above the dark surface here and there, and I felt all "one love" with the trees, the water, and the mossy beards that randomly floated up from the bottom and puffed out into thousands of brown dandelion parachutes as they brushed against you. I felt naturally and creatively part of the scene and with ****. As we laid in the tall grass drying off, the ants bit our feet. I could have rolled over and been directly in his arms and felt totally right there. Instead I read him pieces of Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America as I rubbed a wheat weed across his legs to dissuade the ants. Riding home I felt my hand on his chest just below his heart - holding him lightly as we sped through the fields down empty country roads. I didn't want to leave the moment. A moment where the side of the road vanishes into grass, then into field, where the scooter sways with the wind and the winding road - his body and mine are one with every gentle movement. I didn't want to think past the moment or about a time when my hand would not rest on his chest just below his heart.
"To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius." (Self-Reliance)
November 24, 2017
"I feel that nothing can befall me in life--no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces--all mean egoitism vanishes." However, "To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
April 23, 2012
While these essays definitely take a bit of effort to read, they are well worth it. I read this on and off over a period of a year or so. I appreciated that it was easy to pick up, read an essay, and then come back to it later when I had the time. There were so many wonderful bits of knowledge and deep insights included in this book. I found myself constantly underlining things I read and thinking about the ideas throughout the day. Emerson is one of the few 'classic' writers that deserves the label. A great collection of essays that can be revisted over and over.
June 24, 2016
If RW were alive today, he'd be a bestselling self-help guru. This book is fantastic. There are some lesser known essays in this book that are excellent. One such essay is called "Illusions."
Self-reliance is a classic essay as is Nature. Power is very interesting as well.
I'm not much for Ralph's poetry but he sure could write an amazing essay!
Self-reliance is a classic essay as is Nature. Power is very interesting as well.
I'm not much for Ralph's poetry but he sure could write an amazing essay!
March 22, 2019
In all honestly, reading this was such a chore for me. I gave it 4 stars because I felt bad that I didn’t dedicate all of myself into reading and appreciating this work. Excellent writing and philosophy, but it went way over my understanding. I wish I had the patience or intelligence to be able to decipher this better!
Currently reading
January 23, 2026121: Explaining how honor comes from time spent being honorable. “The force of character is cumulative.”
“Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day, because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.”
122: Nothing is out of reach. Everything on earth is yours to claim and simply exists for you.
“Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, "Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been in-sane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.”
124:
“Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”
125:
“Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state; in the shooting of the gulf; in the darting to an aim.”
126:
"At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say: "Come out unto us." Do not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a moment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.""
129:
"Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired."
129:
"The secret of fortune is joy in our hands."
133:
“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, as so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not incumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a christianity intrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?”
134:
“And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem what they call the soul's progress, namely, the religious, learned and civil institutions, as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other, by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of what he has, out of new respect for his being. Especially he hates what he has, if he sees that it is accidental-came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is permanent and living prop-erty, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man is put. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it."”
192:
“As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. It is adult already in the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing. They are all lost on him: but as much soul as I have, avails. If I am merely wilful, he gives me a Roland for an Oliver, sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.”
“The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, "How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?" We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. It was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of that man's perception-"It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases, but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false; this is the mark and character of intelligence."”
“Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day, because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.”
122: Nothing is out of reach. Everything on earth is yours to claim and simply exists for you.
“Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, "Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been in-sane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.”
124:
“Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”
125:
“Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state; in the shooting of the gulf; in the darting to an aim.”
126:
"At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say: "Come out unto us." Do not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a moment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.""
129:
"Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired."
129:
"The secret of fortune is joy in our hands."
133:
“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, as so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not incumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a christianity intrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?”
134:
“And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem what they call the soul's progress, namely, the religious, learned and civil institutions, as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other, by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of what he has, out of new respect for his being. Especially he hates what he has, if he sees that it is accidental-came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is permanent and living prop-erty, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man is put. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it."”
192:
“As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. It is adult already in the infant man. In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing. They are all lost on him: but as much soul as I have, avails. If I am merely wilful, he gives me a Roland for an Oliver, sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.”
“The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, "How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?" We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake. It was a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of that man's perception-"It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases, but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false; this is the mark and character of intelligence."”
September 7, 2015
Revisit this book often
March 24, 2011
Not a HUGE transcendentalist fan, but he didn't get so famous for nothing.
January 3, 2018
Timeless, thoughtful, engaging, a great read!
March 8, 2017
From the blur of college classes, I remember this lovely prose.
May 24, 2018
A good read. Essays and Poems is a must read for all literature student
September 10, 2018
This should be required reading for everyone.
January 22, 2019
I don't agree with everything he says, but what he does say, HE SAYS IT SO WELL.
July 3, 2019
I wish my vocabulary were richer so I could enjoy and appreciate this wise man even more than I do now
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