Emerson as a PoetM. L. Holbrook & Company, 1883 - 134 pages |
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Page 66 - Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! I never thought to ask, I never knew ; But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
Page 35 - O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye ; For out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat.
Page 106 - He laid us as we lay at birth On the cool flowery lap of earth, Smiles broke from us and we had ease ; The hills were round us, and the breeze Went o'er the sun-lit fields again ; Our foreheads felt the wind and rain. Our youth return'd ; for there was shed On spirits that had long been dead, Spirits dried up and closely furl'd, The freshness of the early world.
Page 26 - Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But, leaving rule and pale forethought, He shall aye climb For his rhyme. Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.
Page 40 - I HUNG my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may find. All were winnowed through and through, Five lines lasted sound and true ; Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot ; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know. Have you eyes to find the five Which five hundred did survive ? SOLUTION.
Page 95 - From all that's fair, from all that's foul, Peals out a cheerful song. It is not only in the rose, It is not only in the bird, Not only where the rainbow glows, Nor in the song of woman heard, But in the darkest, meanest things There alway, alway something sings.
Page 87 - His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke ; and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was, lest he should make an end.
Page 87 - Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.
Page 97 - TEACH me your mood, O patient stars ! Who climb each night the ancient sky, Leaving on space no shade, no scars, No trace of age, no fear to die.
Page 25 - THY trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, Free, peremptory, clear. No jingling serenader's art, Nor tinkle of piano strings, Can make the wild blood start In its mystic springs. The kingly bard Must smite the chords rudely and hard, As with hammer or with mace; That they may render back Artful thunder, which conveys Secrets of the solar track, Sparks of the supersolar blaze.