Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson

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W. Scott, 1888 - 207 pages
This late 19th-century work is a biography of American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson.
 

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Page 73 - 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 which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day 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,...
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 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 - Musketaquit, a goblin strong, Of shard and flint makes jewels gay; They lose their grief who hear his song, And where he winds is the day of day. So forth and brighter fares my stream, — Who drink it shall not thirst again; No darkness stains its equal gleam, And ages drop in it like rain.
Page 127 - Readers of poetry see the factory-village, and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these ; for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading ; but the poet sees them fall within the great Order not less than the bee-hive, or the spider's geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars she loves like her own.

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