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Emerson: Poems
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the best-loved figures in nineteenth-century American literature. Though he earned his central place in our culture as an essayist and philosopher, since his death his reputation as a poet has grown as well.
Known for challenging traditional thought and for his faith in the individual, Emerson was the chief spokesman for the Transcendentalist movement. His poems speak to his most passionately held belief: that external authority should be disregarded in favor of one’s own experience. From the embattled farmers who “fired the shot heard round the world” in the stirring “Concord Hymn,” to the flower in “The Rhodora,” whose existence demonstrates “that if eyes were made for seeing, / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being,” Emerson celebrates the existence of the sublime in the human and in nature.
Combining intensity of feeling with his famous idealism, Emerson’s poems reveal a moving, more intimate side of the man revered as the Sage of Concord.
Known for challenging traditional thought and for his faith in the individual, Emerson was the chief spokesman for the Transcendentalist movement. His poems speak to his most passionately held belief: that external authority should be disregarded in favor of one’s own experience. From the embattled farmers who “fired the shot heard round the world” in the stirring “Concord Hymn,” to the flower in “The Rhodora,” whose existence demonstrates “that if eyes were made for seeing, / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being,” Emerson celebrates the existence of the sublime in the human and in nature.
Combining intensity of feeling with his famous idealism, Emerson’s poems reveal a moving, more intimate side of the man revered as the Sage of Concord.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published September 14, 2004
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338 people want to read
About the author
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3,411 books5,358 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 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 29, 2017
"Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces."
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a writer, an essayist, a naturalist, an abolitionist, a preacher, a philosopher, and a poet. He was so many things, but above all else, he was a truth seeker. He delved into all aspects of humanity and sought to understand the workings of the universe, the human mind and the soul. Ultimately he wanted to determine how we can live better, more positive lives.
He led the nineteenth century nature-inspired Transcendentalist movement, a spiritual movement divorced of dogma and religion. He believed one could find God only in nature and in one self. He wrote about the Over Soul, the universal ONE force that connects us all, and how divinity is within. For these ideas, some called him a prophet, others an infidel. No doubt, he stirred things up and his ideas were controversial at the time.
This book of poetry is a gem because it shows us Emerson's more lyrical and intimate side. We know him for his essays and speeches, but few know he was a remarkable poet. This Everyman Pocket edition with its beautiful cover of trees is a nice reminder to turn to nature and the soul.
Included in this book of poetry is also an excerpt from his famous essay The Poet. "For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression," he writes. "In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression."
For those who love nature poetry I wholeheartedly recommend this book and edition.
For I am weary of the surfaces."
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a writer, an essayist, a naturalist, an abolitionist, a preacher, a philosopher, and a poet. He was so many things, but above all else, he was a truth seeker. He delved into all aspects of humanity and sought to understand the workings of the universe, the human mind and the soul. Ultimately he wanted to determine how we can live better, more positive lives.
He led the nineteenth century nature-inspired Transcendentalist movement, a spiritual movement divorced of dogma and religion. He believed one could find God only in nature and in one self. He wrote about the Over Soul, the universal ONE force that connects us all, and how divinity is within. For these ideas, some called him a prophet, others an infidel. No doubt, he stirred things up and his ideas were controversial at the time.
This book of poetry is a gem because it shows us Emerson's more lyrical and intimate side. We know him for his essays and speeches, but few know he was a remarkable poet. This Everyman Pocket edition with its beautiful cover of trees is a nice reminder to turn to nature and the soul.
Included in this book of poetry is also an excerpt from his famous essay The Poet. "For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression," he writes. "In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression."
For those who love nature poetry I wholeheartedly recommend this book and edition.
November 18, 2025
“A beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of.”
I like to be reminded of this to calm my desire To Know.
So much beauty in this little volume of thoughts and ideas.
I like to be reminded of this to calm my desire To Know.
So much beauty in this little volume of thoughts and ideas.
December 20, 2015
A nice collection, beginning with the surprising "Rhodora": Beauty needs no excuse!
September 26, 2016
A great selection of Emerson's work. I will be picking this book of poems up in the years to come to reread. A compact book that i found easy to carry along with me wherever i went.
September 1, 2024
In his book ‘Nature’, Emerson states that "the creation of beauty is Art," and that only a few have the capacity to create it. The few "seek to embody it in new forms." The varied forms of nature are basically identical; "nature, is a sea of forms radically alike" and the forms are alike because beauty "glides through the sea of form."
As Proclus said, "Beauty swims on the light of forms. forms." The end of art is the creation of beauty, "eternal beauty".
This beauty cannot be defined, even though "a leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean make an analogous impression on the mind." This impression is more or less an intuition. It refers to the objects which are in reality the symbols of human thought. "The whole of nature is metaphor a of the human mind." Then the duty of the artist is to present unity in diversity. In this endeavor he has to relate his thought to a proper symbol.
He can accomplish this only when he realizes that symbols are expressive. "In the transmission of the heavenly waters, every hose fits every hydrant." Shakespeare's "imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection."
The symbols agree with the thought. In such a case there is nothing ugly because the ugly is that which is perceived in separateness. The great poet makes the objects of nature "revolve round the axis of his primary thought, and disposes them anew."
This disposition is what meant by 'the creation of beauty'. Beauty emerges and through the symbols is apprehended by thought. It is an organic expression. The organic principle was taken over from Plato, Aristotle, and Coleridge. The work of art must be an organic whole.
Each part must have its own proper and unique place and fulfill its specific functions. Then each part will influence all other parts and be in turn influenced by them. The parts contribute to the whole, which gives each its specific significance. Such a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This organic whole has a beginning, middle, and an end.
Emerson's theory does not distinguish between the internal structure of a poem and its external relations. It would embody a set of autonomous symbols which cannot be controlled or evaluated on the basis of non-poetic standards or norms.
But it can be evaluated in the light of intuition and imagination which have their origin and goal in the Over-soul.
The whole world will then be a great poem. The good poem "shall thrill the world by the mere juxtaposition and interaction of lines and sentences that singly would have been of little worth and short date.
Rightly is this art named composition, and the composition has manifold the effect of the component parts The organized thoughts beget more, and the theatrically combined individuals have in addition to their own a quiet new collective power. The main is made up of many islands, the state of many men, the poem of many thoughts, each of which, in its turn, filled the whole sky of the poet, was day and Being to him."
The poem is an organic whole and everything in it refers to the center which alone can give them their individual significance. Imagination flows and the movement is cyclic and spiral pointing to significance beyond the poem. It involves an interaction of the parts in such a way that it can present a kind of movement in the parts and in the whole as well.
There is a progressive transformation of the parts and of the whole. Herein Emerson draws a valid distinction between the poet and mystic. Unlike the mystics, the poet's symbols are fluxional. They are expanding and suggestive.
Attracted by the English mataphysical poets, Emerson was also alive to the contemporary spirit of scientific enquiry.
The resulting confusion gave rise to scepticism. At the same time following Coleridge, he employed the image of the Aeolian harp as his favourite one. This image suggests his idea of the poet's function.
In the essay "The Poet," he wrote, "Poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those prima warblings, and attempt to write them down." The individual poet is only a medium that gives a form to an aspect of the ever-present and ever-living poem.
The poet is "the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty." Every age needs a poet and gets a poet it deserves; "the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet."
As a poet Emerson rebelled against the traditional forms. Instead of the melodic line, he gave rough terse periods; and the poem is more symbolic and intellectual. His revolt against the conventions appears in his poem "Uriel" where he wrote:
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth and what seems.
In this discussion the "stern old war-gods" have been brought under control. The young gods began to reveal the secrets of life and they gave rise to "truth-speaking things". The new poets then will have to discover the truth for themselves by capturing Nature's music.
In the poem "Merlin" he said:
The kingly bard
Must smile the Chords rudely and hard…..
He shall not climb
For his rhyme.....
But mount to paradise,
By the stairway of surprise…
Poetry answers the basic function of the individual which is to seek truth. The poet receives wisdom.
Constance Rourke remarks: "A full philosophy, a full persuasion, a critique of American life. Emerson never suffered. His communications were broken, lyrical, rhapsodic; his writings and speeches had the air of improvisation. Even his poetry has the same strange air of incompletion; it is that of a born lyrist struggling with a strange language in a new country of the mind, and unable to find an unpremeditated freedom. Emotion had a large part in Emerson's writing, but it was seldom a personal emotion, most often the revelation of some common happy mood........ He followed the form of the native monologue, in which the first person had been steadily used, the personal revelation of fact or feeling consistently avoided, which had moved toward the generic, including the many experiences rather than the one......In Emerson the interior voice was heard unmistakably in reverie or soliloquy...... In Emerson the personal inner voice spoke and this belonged not to the realm of introspection, cultivated by the Puritan, but to that other realm of the plain Yankee, who consciously listened to his own mind, whose deliberate speech had room for undertones and further meanings"
Emerson's poetry was the expression of a strenuous struggle to discover the truth for himself. It was his personal quest that mattered.
He wrote:
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.
He achieved independence as a thinker and wondered freely in the realm of human experience and thought. Thereby he was enabled to live in spirit. Like Blake he seemed to live in eternities.
Hence, he observes that he finds God in the core of his heart and that he hears always the voice of God coming from the bottom of his heart. Truly, it can be said that here is poetry which is a revelation.
Poetry has a unique rhythm. His poems have at times unusual little lives. These are the products of his belief that breathing determines phrase-rhythms.
The breathing here is more likely to be the breath of the orator. The rhythms contribute to the music, and the result is a musical phrase which is at the basis of many good poems of Emerson.
The charm of music did not allow Emerson to indulge in ornamental verse. Never ornate, he can sometimes give original and brilliant lines like:
Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.
But sometimes the lines are unmusical and broken and if didacticism appears, it is rather rare. Emerson held that the poet is the student, not the teacher; and poetry then is moral, not didactic.
The poet can have "the day of days, the great day of the feast of life" only when his "inward eye opens to the Unity in things."
The distinction between didacticism and moral function is one which was clearly enunciated by Shelley.
A poem is active if the truth it expresses appeals only to the intellect. It has a moral function if the pressed truth arises out of the imagination and appeals to the expressed feeling, emotion, and imagination of the reader. Emerson's poems have this moral value. Truly can it be said of him that as a poet he participated "in the eternal, the infinite, and the one".
Take his poem ‘Brahma’ He writes:
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven…..
This sixteen-line poem separated into four quatrains is candid and flawless. At the same time, there is a great deal of delicacy and profundity of thought hidden behind this linguistic minimalism.
The poem's command lies in its capability to deliver the most insightful conjectural and sublime ideas in the humblest and effervescent language and style possible. Each line contains eight syllables and the dominant meter is iambic tetrameter.
This poem of Emerson is a brilliant replication and depiction of Emerson's work at large. Emerson's poem is a transcendentalist investigation of the nature of life and death, over and above the superlative reach of the divine.
Emerson pursues to develop an allegory for explaining transcendentalist thought by appropriating the Hindu deity Brahma.
He was aware of contradiction swaying things and thoughts. Good and evil, Individual and society, non-conformity and neighborliness, scholar ship and intuition- n-these are some of the contradictions which he felt are like cosmic seesaws. Each opposite sets the other aside.
In "Uriel" he wrote:
Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.
The reconciliation of opposites presented here is an act of the imagination.
Only rarely do we find in his poetry the emergence of the compelling rhythm derived from passionate thought. After speaking about slavery in the "Ode" inscribed to W. H. Channing, he states:
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are
Round the roll till dark is light.
The precision of the words here contributes to the rhythmic beauty. A similar feature appears when he says: String to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.
It is not mere wit that we have in lines like these. Emerson's powerful feelings transform his ideas.
The passionate thought issuing in a powerful rhythm appears in the "Ode to Channing”:
The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men;
Small bat and wren.
House in the oak:
If earth-fire cleave
The upheaved land, and bury the folk
The southern crocodile would grieve…
The integral unity of feeling, thought, and rhythm in lines like these is an example of of organic a form.
Take his poem ‘Concord Hymn’. The poem was sung on July 4, 1837 by Emerson himself at the completion of a Monument built in memory of the heroes who fought in the battles of Lexington and Concord.
The poem goes on to say that there is a strong bridge over the river near Concord. This was the spot where the battle was fought in April, 1775.
In course of time both the victor and the vanquished have been removed by death. It is very natural. Nothing can resist the ravages of time. Time sweeps away even the bridge from over the river.
The beginning of this poem is almost reminiscent of James Shirley’s immortal lines:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Emerson says that after 62 years the people instituted a monument to immortalize the memories of the departed soldiers and heroes of the war. This was meant to preserve the memories of that great national event. Even the persons who erected the monument and their sons too would die.
In fact, the monument itself would wear away in the course of time. So, the poet requests time and nature to spare this monument. The request has its justification for the reason that the monument is committed not only to the heroes of the past, but also to Time and Nature.
Here Emerson is relating human life to time and also to nature. Since an intelligent and astute surrender to nature is the same as becoming one with God, the prayer to nature is a prayer to God, to the Over- Soul.
This is the central thought of Emerson's metaphysics. Some of the poems of Emerson are about such a form. "The Snow Storm" presents the creative principle in nature as the north wind. This wind is said to be a "fierce artificer" careless of "number or proportion."
A word on one of his most famous poem ‘Hamatreya’…
This profound philosophical poem by Emerson, couched in humble, conversational language, runs into about fifty-five unrhymed lines. It is free verse, bordering on poetic prose. The title of this poem is derived from the Vishnu Purana.
It is a shortened form of two words, "He Maitreya" or "O Maitreya". Emerson combines the two words into one. Emerson took the title of the poem, its theme and the song of the Earth from the same Purana.
In his Journal (1845) Emerson wrote an extended passage from the Vishnu Purana. The central idea of the poem appears in this extract as noted down by the poet:
"Kings who with consumable frames have possessed this ever-enduring world, and who have indulged the feeling that suggests 'this earth is mine'--- 'it is my son's', 'it belongs to my dynasty'--- have all passed away. Earth laughs, as if smiling with autumnal flowers to behold her kings unable to effect the subjugation of themselves'. Then the song of the Earth is recited to Maitreya. In this song of the Earth Maitreya is addressed as "He Maitreya".
The song of the Earth brings out the infirmity and transience of man. Man's possessions are all provisional and slippery.
No man can live or keep his possessions forever, Referring to the early settlers of Concord, Emerson says that these people possessed the land and the land produced for them rich crops of food grains, vegetables, fruits and flowers. Each farmer walked proudly declaring that the land belonged to him. He fancied that trees in his field know him as well as his dog knows him.
But the Earth chuckled at them and at their narcissism and craze for possessions. All these men are dead and gone.
They lie buried under their graves. Now strangers plough their fields, Earth laughs at their pride because they believed that their fields belonged to them. They did not see Death lurking at their corner.
The Earth says: The land belongs to the Earth, not to man. The stars, the sun, the moon, and the seas they endure and are ancient. No ancient men are alive today. Legal documents hold out the names of their owners, but the owners themselves have gone. The Earth has remained, but the owners and their inheritors have gone. They were unable to hold the Earth, but the Earth holds them in her womb.
The poem begins with reference to the earliest settlers of Concord, who possessed the land there. They tilled the land and the land yielded to them rich harvests of grain, vegetables, fruits and flowers.
Each farmer felt gratified of his portion of land and proclaimed with fulfillment: "This land is mine and my children's and my name is linked with it. The land belongs to me and I belong to the land. This land will remain mine for ever." But where are all these men now? They are all dead and gone. Now strangers have taken possession of their lands, and these new inheritors also have the same silly and self-important thoughts.
Earth laughs at them. They are mugs who hope to possess the land forever. The land cannot be theirs forever.
They steer the plough in the fields but cannot steer clear their feet from the snares of the grave. These owners of lands do not see death lurking round the corner to swallow them up. Death will turn each of them into a piece of clay and mix him with his land itself.
Thereupon the Earth says: Stars, seas, oceans, shores last incessantly. One can see ancient stars and ancient seas. But who has seen ancient men? Even I (Earth) who see all things cannot see ancient men alive.
The rights of own of ownership pass on from generation to generation. All new inheritors, by turns, go floating like foam on the stream of water. The lawyers and the laws, the kings and kingdoms, they are all gone, swept clean from the face of the earth.
These men called me (Earth) theirs and believed to possess me. Yet they are all gone --- one by one though each wished to stay here. How can I be theirs? They could not hold me, but I hold them under their graves forever.
This poem derives its harmoniousness and charm from the old-world atmosphere and allusions that characterize its title and contents. It makes a permanent imprint through its amalgamation of art, philosophy and bleakness of life.
Emerson achieved the organic form' in most of his poems…..
As Proclus said, "Beauty swims on the light of forms. forms." The end of art is the creation of beauty, "eternal beauty".
This beauty cannot be defined, even though "a leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean make an analogous impression on the mind." This impression is more or less an intuition. It refers to the objects which are in reality the symbols of human thought. "The whole of nature is metaphor a of the human mind." Then the duty of the artist is to present unity in diversity. In this endeavor he has to relate his thought to a proper symbol.
He can accomplish this only when he realizes that symbols are expressive. "In the transmission of the heavenly waters, every hose fits every hydrant." Shakespeare's "imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection."
The symbols agree with the thought. In such a case there is nothing ugly because the ugly is that which is perceived in separateness. The great poet makes the objects of nature "revolve round the axis of his primary thought, and disposes them anew."
This disposition is what meant by 'the creation of beauty'. Beauty emerges and through the symbols is apprehended by thought. It is an organic expression. The organic principle was taken over from Plato, Aristotle, and Coleridge. The work of art must be an organic whole.
Each part must have its own proper and unique place and fulfill its specific functions. Then each part will influence all other parts and be in turn influenced by them. The parts contribute to the whole, which gives each its specific significance. Such a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This organic whole has a beginning, middle, and an end.
Emerson's theory does not distinguish between the internal structure of a poem and its external relations. It would embody a set of autonomous symbols which cannot be controlled or evaluated on the basis of non-poetic standards or norms.
But it can be evaluated in the light of intuition and imagination which have their origin and goal in the Over-soul.
The whole world will then be a great poem. The good poem "shall thrill the world by the mere juxtaposition and interaction of lines and sentences that singly would have been of little worth and short date.
Rightly is this art named composition, and the composition has manifold the effect of the component parts The organized thoughts beget more, and the theatrically combined individuals have in addition to their own a quiet new collective power. The main is made up of many islands, the state of many men, the poem of many thoughts, each of which, in its turn, filled the whole sky of the poet, was day and Being to him."
The poem is an organic whole and everything in it refers to the center which alone can give them their individual significance. Imagination flows and the movement is cyclic and spiral pointing to significance beyond the poem. It involves an interaction of the parts in such a way that it can present a kind of movement in the parts and in the whole as well.
There is a progressive transformation of the parts and of the whole. Herein Emerson draws a valid distinction between the poet and mystic. Unlike the mystics, the poet's symbols are fluxional. They are expanding and suggestive.
Attracted by the English mataphysical poets, Emerson was also alive to the contemporary spirit of scientific enquiry.
The resulting confusion gave rise to scepticism. At the same time following Coleridge, he employed the image of the Aeolian harp as his favourite one. This image suggests his idea of the poet's function.
In the essay "The Poet," he wrote, "Poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those prima warblings, and attempt to write them down." The individual poet is only a medium that gives a form to an aspect of the ever-present and ever-living poem.
The poet is "the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty." Every age needs a poet and gets a poet it deserves; "the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet."
As a poet Emerson rebelled against the traditional forms. Instead of the melodic line, he gave rough terse periods; and the poem is more symbolic and intellectual. His revolt against the conventions appears in his poem "Uriel" where he wrote:
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth and what seems.
In this discussion the "stern old war-gods" have been brought under control. The young gods began to reveal the secrets of life and they gave rise to "truth-speaking things". The new poets then will have to discover the truth for themselves by capturing Nature's music.
In the poem "Merlin" he said:
The kingly bard
Must smile the Chords rudely and hard…..
He shall not climb
For his rhyme.....
But mount to paradise,
By the stairway of surprise…
Poetry answers the basic function of the individual which is to seek truth. The poet receives wisdom.
Constance Rourke remarks: "A full philosophy, a full persuasion, a critique of American life. Emerson never suffered. His communications were broken, lyrical, rhapsodic; his writings and speeches had the air of improvisation. Even his poetry has the same strange air of incompletion; it is that of a born lyrist struggling with a strange language in a new country of the mind, and unable to find an unpremeditated freedom. Emotion had a large part in Emerson's writing, but it was seldom a personal emotion, most often the revelation of some common happy mood........ He followed the form of the native monologue, in which the first person had been steadily used, the personal revelation of fact or feeling consistently avoided, which had moved toward the generic, including the many experiences rather than the one......In Emerson the interior voice was heard unmistakably in reverie or soliloquy...... In Emerson the personal inner voice spoke and this belonged not to the realm of introspection, cultivated by the Puritan, but to that other realm of the plain Yankee, who consciously listened to his own mind, whose deliberate speech had room for undertones and further meanings"
Emerson's poetry was the expression of a strenuous struggle to discover the truth for himself. It was his personal quest that mattered.
He wrote:
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.
He achieved independence as a thinker and wondered freely in the realm of human experience and thought. Thereby he was enabled to live in spirit. Like Blake he seemed to live in eternities.
Hence, he observes that he finds God in the core of his heart and that he hears always the voice of God coming from the bottom of his heart. Truly, it can be said that here is poetry which is a revelation.
Poetry has a unique rhythm. His poems have at times unusual little lives. These are the products of his belief that breathing determines phrase-rhythms.
The breathing here is more likely to be the breath of the orator. The rhythms contribute to the music, and the result is a musical phrase which is at the basis of many good poems of Emerson.
The charm of music did not allow Emerson to indulge in ornamental verse. Never ornate, he can sometimes give original and brilliant lines like:
Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.
But sometimes the lines are unmusical and broken and if didacticism appears, it is rather rare. Emerson held that the poet is the student, not the teacher; and poetry then is moral, not didactic.
The poet can have "the day of days, the great day of the feast of life" only when his "inward eye opens to the Unity in things."
The distinction between didacticism and moral function is one which was clearly enunciated by Shelley.
A poem is active if the truth it expresses appeals only to the intellect. It has a moral function if the pressed truth arises out of the imagination and appeals to the expressed feeling, emotion, and imagination of the reader. Emerson's poems have this moral value. Truly can it be said of him that as a poet he participated "in the eternal, the infinite, and the one".
Take his poem ‘Brahma’ He writes:
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven…..
This sixteen-line poem separated into four quatrains is candid and flawless. At the same time, there is a great deal of delicacy and profundity of thought hidden behind this linguistic minimalism.
The poem's command lies in its capability to deliver the most insightful conjectural and sublime ideas in the humblest and effervescent language and style possible. Each line contains eight syllables and the dominant meter is iambic tetrameter.
This poem of Emerson is a brilliant replication and depiction of Emerson's work at large. Emerson's poem is a transcendentalist investigation of the nature of life and death, over and above the superlative reach of the divine.
Emerson pursues to develop an allegory for explaining transcendentalist thought by appropriating the Hindu deity Brahma.
He was aware of contradiction swaying things and thoughts. Good and evil, Individual and society, non-conformity and neighborliness, scholar ship and intuition- n-these are some of the contradictions which he felt are like cosmic seesaws. Each opposite sets the other aside.
In "Uriel" he wrote:
Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.
The reconciliation of opposites presented here is an act of the imagination.
Only rarely do we find in his poetry the emergence of the compelling rhythm derived from passionate thought. After speaking about slavery in the "Ode" inscribed to W. H. Channing, he states:
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are
Round the roll till dark is light.
The precision of the words here contributes to the rhythmic beauty. A similar feature appears when he says: String to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.
It is not mere wit that we have in lines like these. Emerson's powerful feelings transform his ideas.
The passionate thought issuing in a powerful rhythm appears in the "Ode to Channing”:
The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men;
Small bat and wren.
House in the oak:
If earth-fire cleave
The upheaved land, and bury the folk
The southern crocodile would grieve…
The integral unity of feeling, thought, and rhythm in lines like these is an example of of organic a form.
Take his poem ‘Concord Hymn’. The poem was sung on July 4, 1837 by Emerson himself at the completion of a Monument built in memory of the heroes who fought in the battles of Lexington and Concord.
The poem goes on to say that there is a strong bridge over the river near Concord. This was the spot where the battle was fought in April, 1775.
In course of time both the victor and the vanquished have been removed by death. It is very natural. Nothing can resist the ravages of time. Time sweeps away even the bridge from over the river.
The beginning of this poem is almost reminiscent of James Shirley’s immortal lines:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Emerson says that after 62 years the people instituted a monument to immortalize the memories of the departed soldiers and heroes of the war. This was meant to preserve the memories of that great national event. Even the persons who erected the monument and their sons too would die.
In fact, the monument itself would wear away in the course of time. So, the poet requests time and nature to spare this monument. The request has its justification for the reason that the monument is committed not only to the heroes of the past, but also to Time and Nature.
Here Emerson is relating human life to time and also to nature. Since an intelligent and astute surrender to nature is the same as becoming one with God, the prayer to nature is a prayer to God, to the Over- Soul.
This is the central thought of Emerson's metaphysics. Some of the poems of Emerson are about such a form. "The Snow Storm" presents the creative principle in nature as the north wind. This wind is said to be a "fierce artificer" careless of "number or proportion."
A word on one of his most famous poem ‘Hamatreya’…
This profound philosophical poem by Emerson, couched in humble, conversational language, runs into about fifty-five unrhymed lines. It is free verse, bordering on poetic prose. The title of this poem is derived from the Vishnu Purana.
It is a shortened form of two words, "He Maitreya" or "O Maitreya". Emerson combines the two words into one. Emerson took the title of the poem, its theme and the song of the Earth from the same Purana.
In his Journal (1845) Emerson wrote an extended passage from the Vishnu Purana. The central idea of the poem appears in this extract as noted down by the poet:
"Kings who with consumable frames have possessed this ever-enduring world, and who have indulged the feeling that suggests 'this earth is mine'--- 'it is my son's', 'it belongs to my dynasty'--- have all passed away. Earth laughs, as if smiling with autumnal flowers to behold her kings unable to effect the subjugation of themselves'. Then the song of the Earth is recited to Maitreya. In this song of the Earth Maitreya is addressed as "He Maitreya".
The song of the Earth brings out the infirmity and transience of man. Man's possessions are all provisional and slippery.
No man can live or keep his possessions forever, Referring to the early settlers of Concord, Emerson says that these people possessed the land and the land produced for them rich crops of food grains, vegetables, fruits and flowers. Each farmer walked proudly declaring that the land belonged to him. He fancied that trees in his field know him as well as his dog knows him.
But the Earth chuckled at them and at their narcissism and craze for possessions. All these men are dead and gone.
They lie buried under their graves. Now strangers plough their fields, Earth laughs at their pride because they believed that their fields belonged to them. They did not see Death lurking at their corner.
The Earth says: The land belongs to the Earth, not to man. The stars, the sun, the moon, and the seas they endure and are ancient. No ancient men are alive today. Legal documents hold out the names of their owners, but the owners themselves have gone. The Earth has remained, but the owners and their inheritors have gone. They were unable to hold the Earth, but the Earth holds them in her womb.
The poem begins with reference to the earliest settlers of Concord, who possessed the land there. They tilled the land and the land yielded to them rich harvests of grain, vegetables, fruits and flowers.
Each farmer felt gratified of his portion of land and proclaimed with fulfillment: "This land is mine and my children's and my name is linked with it. The land belongs to me and I belong to the land. This land will remain mine for ever." But where are all these men now? They are all dead and gone. Now strangers have taken possession of their lands, and these new inheritors also have the same silly and self-important thoughts.
Earth laughs at them. They are mugs who hope to possess the land forever. The land cannot be theirs forever.
They steer the plough in the fields but cannot steer clear their feet from the snares of the grave. These owners of lands do not see death lurking round the corner to swallow them up. Death will turn each of them into a piece of clay and mix him with his land itself.
Thereupon the Earth says: Stars, seas, oceans, shores last incessantly. One can see ancient stars and ancient seas. But who has seen ancient men? Even I (Earth) who see all things cannot see ancient men alive.
The rights of own of ownership pass on from generation to generation. All new inheritors, by turns, go floating like foam on the stream of water. The lawyers and the laws, the kings and kingdoms, they are all gone, swept clean from the face of the earth.
These men called me (Earth) theirs and believed to possess me. Yet they are all gone --- one by one though each wished to stay here. How can I be theirs? They could not hold me, but I hold them under their graves forever.
This poem derives its harmoniousness and charm from the old-world atmosphere and allusions that characterize its title and contents. It makes a permanent imprint through its amalgamation of art, philosophy and bleakness of life.
Emerson achieved the organic form' in most of his poems…..
October 22, 2020
Some poems in the collection are to be treasured as eternal gems, some inspiring, and some to drag through. The poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson is dedicated to finding merit in everything, in realizing what things mean to us, is to have an individual world-view in which we explain the world in. In this department, his poetry reigns supreme.
January 24, 2023
Emerson is brilliant. Of the longer poems, The Adirondacks was my favorite, while it was hard for me to relate to May-Day. The short poems are sometimes challenging, sometimes accessible, often addressing themes of nature, American history, art, love, and idealism.
June 30, 2021
I quite liked the style, format, and subject matter of these poems. Although not every poem in this collection was a winner (for me, personally), I will likely check out more Emerson poetry.
November 11, 2024
Dense and clever, artfully crafted poetry that I found to be really enriching and enjoyable.
May 28, 2020
I'm obviously a massive fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Obviously because he's just a general all round legend and why would anyone not be a fan of him. But i really think his literature is better than his poetry . Anyway here is some of the best bits:
The earth , it's a place of sorrow. Scanty joys are here below. Who is nothing has no sorrow
Out of sleeping awaking, out of waking asleep, life death overtaking, deep underneath deep?
The baby by its mother , lies bathed in joy, calls itself uncounted, the sun is its toy. Shines the piece of all beings, without cloud in its eyes, and the some of the worlds , in soft miniature lies. But man crouches and blushes, absconds and conceals. He creepeth and peeps, he palters and steals. Infirm, melancholy, jealous glancing around, an accomplice, he poisons the ground.
Warning to the blind and deaf, it's written on iron leaf, who drinks of cupids nectar Cup, loveth downward and not up. Therefore, who loves, of gods or men, shall not by the same be loved again.
A Ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs
The world uncertain comes and goes
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,
And after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
Oh friend, my bosom said,
Through the alone the Sky is arched,
Through the rose is red.
All things through thee take nobler form
And look beyond the earth
the mill round of our fates appears
A sun path in they worth.
Me to thy nobleness is taught
To master my despair
The fountains of my hidden life,
Are through thy friendship fair.
Love on his errand bound to go
Can swim the flood, and Wade through snow.
Where way is none it will creep and wind
And eat through Alps it's home to find.
How strange strange strange
The dualism of man
That he can enlist
But half his being in his act
do that which you can do
The world will feel its need of you
how many big events to shake the earth
Lie packed in silence waiting for their birth.
Pail genius roves alone
No scouts contract his way
None credits him till he has shown
His diamonds to the day
All things rehearse
The meaning of the universe.
By virtue of his science the poet is the namer or language maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence and giving to everyone its own name and not in others, thereby rejoicing the intellect which delights in detachment or boundary.
The poet knows what he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly or with the Flowers of the mind: not with the in selects, used as an organ but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life. Or as the agents were wants to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar.
The earth , it's a place of sorrow. Scanty joys are here below. Who is nothing has no sorrow
Out of sleeping awaking, out of waking asleep, life death overtaking, deep underneath deep?
The baby by its mother , lies bathed in joy, calls itself uncounted, the sun is its toy. Shines the piece of all beings, without cloud in its eyes, and the some of the worlds , in soft miniature lies. But man crouches and blushes, absconds and conceals. He creepeth and peeps, he palters and steals. Infirm, melancholy, jealous glancing around, an accomplice, he poisons the ground.
Warning to the blind and deaf, it's written on iron leaf, who drinks of cupids nectar Cup, loveth downward and not up. Therefore, who loves, of gods or men, shall not by the same be loved again.
A Ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs
The world uncertain comes and goes
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,
And after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
Oh friend, my bosom said,
Through the alone the Sky is arched,
Through the rose is red.
All things through thee take nobler form
And look beyond the earth
the mill round of our fates appears
A sun path in they worth.
Me to thy nobleness is taught
To master my despair
The fountains of my hidden life,
Are through thy friendship fair.
Love on his errand bound to go
Can swim the flood, and Wade through snow.
Where way is none it will creep and wind
And eat through Alps it's home to find.
How strange strange strange
The dualism of man
That he can enlist
But half his being in his act
do that which you can do
The world will feel its need of you
how many big events to shake the earth
Lie packed in silence waiting for their birth.
Pail genius roves alone
No scouts contract his way
None credits him till he has shown
His diamonds to the day
All things rehearse
The meaning of the universe.
By virtue of his science the poet is the namer or language maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence and giving to everyone its own name and not in others, thereby rejoicing the intellect which delights in detachment or boundary.
The poet knows what he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly or with the Flowers of the mind: not with the in selects, used as an organ but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life. Or as the agents were wants to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar.
June 12, 2013
Emerson's poetry are Emerson's essays in condensed form, making a great deal of the poetry instructional. Some lines bear up and shine on. Others are in a long conversation with other poets, of the age and of ages past. Interesting, but a bit too mediated and not immediate for my poetic preferences.
July 30, 2014
Reading an old edition of Emerson's poems for my morning meditations. Great way to start the day...
July 8, 2014
This was disappointing. The poem that I was most familiar with going into this, Brahma, remains my favorite of Emerson's poems. In fact, it's the only one that resonates with me at all.
March 20, 2016
I'm learning that while I like Emerson's essays, I really don't like his poetry. . .
August 26, 2016
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