Emerson and his brothers walked in youth, must be of earlier date than the " Dirge." It has two verses in common with this, here bracketed.

Here is another account of the brothers' joys,—

We sauntered amidst miracles,

We were the fairies of the fells,
The summer was our quaint bouquet,
The winter-eve our Milky Way;
We played in turn with all the slides
In Nature's lamp of suns and tides;
We pierced all books with criticism,
We plied with doubts the catechism,
The Christian fold,

The Bible old

Page 364, note I. Among the more youthful pieces at the end of this volume is another poem on the River and its associations.

MUSIC. Page 365, note 1. The present editor obtained Mr. Cabot's permission to include this among the minor poems in the Appendix to the posthumous edition of the Works in 1883, even though Dr. Holmes made some protest against allowing the "mud and scum of things" to have a voice. At the celebration of the recent centenary of Mr. Emerson's birth, it was pleasant to see that the poem had become a favorite, even with children, and was often quoted.

THE WALK. Page 366, note I. Mr. Emerson, after a happy walk with Thoreau, wrote in his journal in 1857:, “To Nero advertising for a new pleasure, a walk in the woods should have been offered. 'Tis one of the secrets for dodging old age."

COSMOS. Page 367, note 1. These verses have no title in the verse-books. "Cosmos" is given by the editor. They were originally trials for a Song of Nature, Nature is

speaking. The May element claimed the later verses, though their sequence was never made out, the first divisions harmonizing fairly, but the last two hopelessly dislocated, though they have a certain charm.

THE MIRACLE. Page 369, note 1. This poem was written at about the same period with “ My Garden," "Boston" and Waldeinsamkeit," between 1857 and 1865.

THE WATERFALL. Page 369, note 2. In addition to his Walden wood-lots, Mr. Emerson bought one on the edge of Lincoln, for the sake of a miniature waterfall in a little brook, the outlet of Flint's Pond. Mr. Thoreau showed him additional charms, certain shrubs and flowers not plentiful in Concord that grew on its banks, veratrum with its tropical growth, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, yellow violets, and the hornbeam, arrow-wood and a bush of mountain laurel. It was a wonderful resort for the various kinds of thrushes.

WALDEN. Page 370. This poem represents the early form of "My Garden." As years went on, verses were added, and at last the groups became distinct.

Shakspeare is the

THE ENCHANTER. Page 373, note I. only biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us, that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour."- Representative Men, p. 208.

GOETHE. Page 373, note 2. Mr. Emerson read Goethe's works through, largely out of his love for Carlyle, who con

stantly praised Goethe to him. Writing to his friend, in April, 1840, he said:

66 You asked me if I read German.

I have contrived to read almost every volume of Goethe, and I have fifty-five [these were little leather-bound duodecimos], but I have read nothing else [i. e. in German], but I have not now looked even into Goethe, for a long time."

This letter shows approximately the date of the verses.

RICHES. Page 374, note 1. There seems to be no question that this is Mr. Emerson's work, in spite of the Scottish garb in which, for his amusement, he clothed the little simile. It has no title in the verse-book.

PHILOSOPHER and INTELLECT. Page 375, note 1. There is a passage in the journal for 1845, called "Icy light," on the cold-bloodedness of the philosopher, most of which is printed in Representative Men: —

almost the sole deduction from the merit of Plato (that which is no doubt incidental to this regnancy of the intellect in his work), that his writings have not the vital authority which the screams of prophets and the sermons of unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. There is an interval; and to the cohesion, contact is necessary. Intellect is the king of non-committal: answers with generalities. He gave me wit instead of love."

LIMITS. Page 375, note 2. See "" History," in Essays, First Series, PP. 39, 40.

INSCRIPTION. Page 376. This was written at the request of Mrs. John M. Forbes, and is carved on a stone wateringfountain on the top of Milton Hill.

POEMS OF YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD

As was said in the Preface, these verses are printed, not for their poetical merit, but as showing the influence, on Mr. Emerson's character, thought and expression, of the sad and the happy events of the third decade of his life. Only a reserve in his strength that could hardly have been expected, together with the serenity of his nature, which was content to wait until the storm blew by, preserved his life during this period with disease ever threatening when it was not actually disabling him. After his establishment of his home in Concord and his second marriage, his health was almost uniformly good, in spite of the very serious exposure involved in his winter lecturing journeys afar, for the remainder of his life.

PRAYER. Page 380. The incident of the hayfield where the Methodist haymaker said to Emerson, raking hay beside him on his uncle's farm, that men are always praying, and that all prayers are granted, which gave him the subject of his first sermon, is told in Mr. Cabot's Memoir. It seems to have suggested lines in this poem.

To-DAY. Page 382. Dr. Holmes has named Mr. Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa Address in 1837 as "Our intellectual Declaration of Independence," but this boyish poem, written thirteen years earlier, shows the germ which grew into the "American Scholar."

FAME. Page 383. This bit of youthful irony on a theme which, even in college, its author often wrote upon, Being

66

and Seeming," was very possibly playfully addressed to one of his brothers, or, it may be, to himself.

THE SUMMONS. Page 384. In the year 1822, Mr. Emerson wrote to a classmate: "I am (I wish I was otherwise) keeping a school, and assisting my venerable brother to lift the truncheon against the fair-haired daughters of this raw city. . . Better tug at the oar, or saw wood, . . . better sow hemp, or hang with it, than sow the seeds of instruction!" Next year matters were worse, for William went abroad, leaving him the school, a formidable experience for a shy youth, still a minor, and younger than some of his fair and troublesome pupils. The " Good-bye, proud world" was his utterance of relief when he fled from them. They were the "silken troop, ‚" skilful in producing his " uneasy blush alluded to in the present poem. Now he was to have the pulpit for a breastwork, for in 1826 he was approbated to preach.

It is interesting to see that the image of the procession of Days, so often used later, was already in his thought.

THE RIVER. Page 385. In the same month in which these lines were written, their author told his brother, in a letter, that he meditated abdicating the profession, for "the lungs in their spiteful lobes sing sexton and sorrow whenever I only ask them to shout a sermon for me."

The poem was evidently written in the beautiful orchard running down to the Concord River behind the Manse.

GOOD HOPE. Page 387. These verses show reviving life, and very likely were written when, in December, 1827, the young minister, going to Concord, New Hampshire, to preach, first saw Ellen Tucker, a beautiful girl of seventeen.