Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Walter Scott, 1888 - 207 pages
 

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Page 51 - For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self...
Page 133 - 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 redbird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Page 34 - O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines...
Page 86 - Cambridge, some thirty years ago, was an event without any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone dissent!
Page 178 - Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.' As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: 'Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave is charmed.
Page 87 - We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy around all.
Page 177 - TERMINUS It is time to be old, To take in sail: — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!
Page 128 - Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldst walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.
Page 117 - And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only selfsufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.
Page 134 - TWO RIVERS THY summer voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain ; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain. Thou in thy narrow banks art pent: % The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament ; Through light, through life, it forward flows.

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