Skip directly to:Main content Main navigation

University of Virginia Library

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

1.

2.

II MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES

3.

III ELEMENTS AND MOTTOES

4.

IV QUATRAINS AND TRANSLATIONS

collapse section

5.

collapse section

FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND THE POETIC GIFT

[There are beggars in Iran and Araby]

[Pale genius roves alone]

[I grieve that better souls than mine]

[For thought, and not praise]

[For Fancy's gift]

[Try the might the Muse affords]

[But over all his crowning grace]

[By thoughts I lead]

[And as the light divides the dark]

[I framed his tongue to music]

[For every God]

[For art, for music over-thrilled]

[Hold of the Maker, not the Made]

[That book is good]

[Like vaulters in a circus round]

[For Genius made his cabin wide]

[The atom displaces all atoms beside]

[To transmute crime to wisdom, so to stem]

[He could condense cerulean ether]

[Forbore the ant-hill, shunned to tread,]

[I have no brothers and no peers]

[The brook sings on, but sings in vain]

[He planted where the deluge ploughed]

[For what need I of book or priest]

[Coin the day-dawn into lines]

[Ah, not to me those dreams belong]

[The Muse's hill by Fear is guarded]

[His instant thought a poet spoke]

[If bright the sun, he tarries]

[The Asmodean feat is mine]

[Slighted Minerva's learnéd tongue]

FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND LIFE

THE BOHEMIAN HYMN

MONADNOC FROM AFAR

WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF GOETHE

INSCRIPTION FOR A WELL IN MEMORY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE WAR

[I have an arrow that will find its mark]

6.

VI POEMS OF YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD 1823–1834

collapse section

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

FATE

Her planted eye to-day controls,
Is in the morrow most at home,
And sternly calls to being souls
That curse her when they come.