the family, though all but Bulkeley (who remained childish through life) helped in turn. William, after teaching school successfully, studied theology in Germany, but was obliged by conscientious doubts to abandon divinity for the law, of which he became a successful and respected practitioner in New York. Waldo, Edward and Charles were drawn together by close ties of taste and sympathy, and circumstances allowed them to remain longer together. They eagerly embraced every chance to visit their grandmother, widow of the Rev. William Emerson of Concord, and later wife of Dr. Ezra Ripley, at the Old Manse. This poem and another version of it, printed in the Appendix under the title of "Peter's Field," recall the happy and sad associations with the Great Meadows and Cæsar's Woods. Edward died in 1834, and Charles two years later. Dr. Holmes and Mr. Cabot in their biographies paid a tribute to these brilliant youths, dying before their prime.

Page 146, note I. "The flower of silken leaf" was the humble lespedeza, which, in after years, Mr. Emerson seldom passed without a tender word for it to his children.

THRENODY. Page 148. This "Ode of Tears was not all written at one time. Little Waldo, the first-born of his parents, died in January, 1842, and the first part of the poem is the expression of his father's great sorrow. The latter portion, beginning

was not written until Time and Thought had brought their healing.

A month after the child's death, his father, in writing to his childless friend, Carlyle, said, "My son, a perfect little boy

ago

of five years and three months, has ended his earthly life. You can never sympathize with me; you can never know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few weeks I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all. . . . From a perfect health and as happy a life and as happy influences as ever child enjoyed, he was hurried out of my arms in three short days by scarlatina. We have two babes yet, one girl of three years, and one girl of three months and a week, but a promise like that Boy's I shall never see. How often I have pleased myself that one day I should send to you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so gladly behind such a representative. I dare not fathom the Invisible and Untold to inquire what relations to my Departed ones I

Of the poem Dr. Holmes said, "It has the dignity of Lycidas without its refrigerating classicism, and with all the tenderness of Cowper's lines on the receipt of his mother's picture."

Two days after Waldo's death his father wrote in his journal:

30 Jan. What he looked upon is better, what he looked not upon is insignificant. The morning of Friday I awoke at three o'clock, and every cock in every barn-yard was shrilling with the most unnecessary noise. The sun went up the morning sky with all his light, but the landscape was dishonored by this loss. For this boy, in whose remembrance I have both slept and awaked so oft, decorated for me the morning star and the evening cloud, — how much more all the particulars of daily economy. A boy of early wisdom, of a grave and even majestic deportment, of a perfect gentleness. . . . He gave up his little innocent breath like a bird.”

.

Page 150, note 1. The boy had his full swing in this

world. Never, I think, did a child enjoy more. He had been thoroughly respected by his parents and those around him, and not interfered with; and he had been the most fortunate in respect to the influences near him, for his Aunt Elizabeth [Hoar] had adopted him from his infancy, and treated him ever with that plain, wise love which belongs to her.

Then Henry Thoreau had been one of the family for the last year and charmed Waldo by the variety of toys, whistles, boats, popguns and all kinds of instruments which he could make and mend; and possessed his love and respect by the gentle firmness with which he always treated him. Margaret Fuller and Caroline Sturgis had also marked the boy, and caressed and conversed with him whenever they were here."

Page 151, note 1. Journal. The chrysalis which he brought in with care and tenderness and gave to his mother to keep is still alive, and he, most beautiful of the children of men, is not here."

Page 158, note 1. The idea of Deity rushing into distribution is treated at length in the first part of the Timaus of Plato.

CONCORD HYMN. Page 158, note 2. From a copy of this hymn as first printed on slips for distribution among the Concord people at the celebration of the completion of the monument on the battle-ground, I note the differences from the poem here given as finally revised by Mr. Emerson in the Selected Poems. In the early editions of the Poems the date is given as 1836. This is a mistake. The Middlesex Yeoman gives the account of this celebration in 1837, and on the original slip in my possession some one sending it to a friend at that time, has written " Sung by the people on battle-ground at the completion of the monument, 4th of July, 1837.”

The first two verses retain exactly their original form. In

the third, the third line, as sung, was

We place with joy a votive stone.

The last verse originally began

O Thou, who made those heroes dare

To die or leave their children free.

MAY-DAY

In 1867, Mr. Emerson gathered into a new volume the poems of the twenty-one years since the publication of the first, and gave it the name May-Day from the happy lyric in honor of Spring with which it opens. His ear had improved, and, though the original vigor remained in the poems, many of them had been kept long by him and had ripened fully. "MayDay," the poem, was probably written in snatches in the woods on his afternoon walks, through many years. Some lines are in journals of 1845. After its publication he saw that the ordering of the different passages to give the advance of Spring was not quite successful, and in the Selected Poems, published nine years later, he improved, but did not quite perfect, the arrangement, for at that time he found mental effort of that sort confusing. Therefore in the posthumous edition of the Poems in 1883, at the suggestion of the present editor, Mr. Cabot consented to a slight further change made with the same intent.

Page 163, note 1. Of the following six lines in one of the verse-books all but the first were in the first edition:

Dripping dew-cold daffodillies,

Making drunk with draught of lilies,
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,

And troops of boys shouting with whoop, and hilloa

And hip, hip, three times three.

Page 163, note 2. This line with a suggestion of English pastoral, found in the first edition, was omitted by the author:Or clapping of shepherd's hands.

Page 165, note 1. The stanza had, in the first edition, a different ending:

The cowslips make the brown brook gay;

A happier hour, a longer day.

Now the sun leads in the May,

Now desire of action wakes,

And the wish to roam.

Page 165, note 2. In the verse-book here followed the couplet

Her cottage chamber, wall and beam,

Glows with the maid's delicious dream.

Page 165, note 3. It seems as if it must have been by accident that the remarkable lines, concluding this stanza, beginning "The youth sees omens, -six of which, in a different order, served as the motto to the second edition of Nature, in 1849, were omitted in the posthumous edition. They followed immediately in this place.

Page 166, note 1. These last four lines are often quoted to show how early Mr. Emerson accepted the doctrine of evolution. It is not certain in what year they were written,