Hymn
Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set today a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brahma

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 recon 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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nemesis

Already blushes in thy cheek

The bosom-thought which thou must speak;

The bird, how far it haply roam

By cloud or isle, is flying home;

The maiden fears, and fearing runs

Into the charmed snare she shuns;

And every man, in love or pride,

Of his fate is never wide.

Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth?

Or prayers the stony Parcae sooth,

Or coax the thunder from its mark?

Or tapers light the chaos dark?

In spite of Virtue and the Muse,

Nemesis will have her dues,

And all our struggles and our toils

Tighter wind the giant coils.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Snowstorm

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 farmhouse at the garden's end.

The sled and traveler 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 northwind's masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every wayward 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 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 snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

And marching single in an endless file,

Bring diadems and faggots in their hands.

To each they offer gifts after his will,

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Bell

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

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

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

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To-day

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

Old mouldy men and books and names and lands
Disgust my reason and defile my hands.
I had as lief respect an ancient shoe,
As love old things for age, and hate the new.
I spurn the Past, my mind disdains its nod,
Nor kneels in homage to so mean a God.
I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze,
The bald antiquity of China praise.
Youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend)
The fault that boys and nations soonest mend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fable

The mountain and the squirrel

Had a quarrel;

And the former called the latter "Little Prig."

Bun replied,

"You are doubtless very big;

But all sorts of things and weather

Must be taken in together

To make up a year

And a sphere.

And I think it's no disgrace

To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,

And not half so spry.

I'll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track;

Talents differ: all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate

DEEP in the man sits fast his fate

To mould his fortunes, mean or great:

Unknown to Cromwell as to me

Was Cromwell's measure or degree;

Unknown to him as to his horse,

If he than his groom be better or worse.

He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs,

With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,

Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,

Broad England harbored not his peer:

Obeying time, the last to own

The Genius from its cloudy throne.

For the prevision is allied

Unto the thing so signified;

Or say, the foresight that awaits

Is the same Genius that creates.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seashore

I HEARD or seemed to hear the chiding Sea

Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?

Am I not always here, thy summer home?

Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?

My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,

My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?

Was ever building like my terraces?

Was ever couch magnificent as mine?

Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn

A little hut suffices like a town.

I make your sculptured architecture vain,

Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,

And carve the coastwise mountain into caves.

Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes,

Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs

Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab

Older than all thy race.

Behold the Sea,

The opaline, the plentiful and strong,

Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,

Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;

Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,

Purger of earth, and medicine of men;

Creating a sweet climate by my breath,

Washing out harms and griefs from memory,

And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,

Giving a hint of that which changes not.

Rich are the sea-gods:--who gives gifts but they?

They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:

They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.

For every wave is wealth to Dædalus,

Wealth to the cunning artist who can work

This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves!

A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?

I with my hammer pounding evermore

The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust,

Strewing my bed, and, in another age,

Rebuild a continent of better men.

Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out

The exodus of nations: I dispersed

Men to all shores that front the hoary main.

I too have arts and sorceries;

Illusion dwells forever with the wave.

I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal

With credulous and imaginative man;

For, though he scoop my water in his palm,

A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.

Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore,

I make some coast alluring, some lone isle,

To distant men, who must go there, or die.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rubies

THEY brought me rubies from the mine,

And held them to the sun;

I said, they are drops of frozen wine

From Eden's vats that run.

I looked again,--I thought them hearts

Of friends to friends unknown;

Tides that should warm each neighboring life

Are locked in sparkling stone.

But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,

To break enchanted ice,

And give love's scarlet tides to flow,--

When shall that sun arise?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My Garden

IF I could put my woods in song

And tell what's there enjoyed,

All men would to my gardens throng,

And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,--

Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;

And rank the savage maples grow

From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge

Which older forests bound;

The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,

Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,

Laid the terraces, one by one;

Ebbing later whence it flowed,

They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,--

The wind and the birds which sowed it;

Not for fame, nor by rules of art,

Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side

Play not in Nature's lawful web,

They heed not moon or solar tide,--

Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,

And every god,--none did refuse;

And be sure at last came Love,

And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable,

As if one spake to another,

In the hemlocks tall, untamable,

And what the whispering grasses smother.

Æolian harps in the pine

Ring with the song of the Fates;

Infant Bacchus in the vine,--

Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime

Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,

Write in a book the morning's prime,

Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods,

Of one import, of varied tone;

They chant the bliss of their abodes

To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound;

But the porches of man's ear

Seldom in this low life's round

Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air

And murmurs in the wold

Speak what I cannot declare,

Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,

The whirlwind in ripples wrote

Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,

And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,

Cannot be carried in book or urn;

Go thy ways now, come later back,

On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,

Of better men than live to-day;

If who can read them comes at last

He will spell in the sculpture,'Stay.'

Ralph Waldo Emerson