LINES TO ELLEN. Page 387. A year from the time when he first saw Miss Tucker, Mr. Emerson again went to Concord, New Hampshire, and soon after became engaged to her. A MOUNTAIN GRAVE. Page 390. After the death of his wife, and during the time when the enlargement of his mental horizon made Mr. Emerson regard the forms in use in the church with increasing repugnance, his health again underwent severe strain, and his future became very uncertain, as the next two poems show. HYMN. Page 393. In the main body of this volume is printed the hymn, We love the venerable house Our fathers built to God, which was sung at the ordination of Rev. Chandler Robbins, Mr. Emerson's successor. The hymn here printed was probably the first trial for a fit utterance for that occasion. SELF-RELIANCE. Page 394. These lines, without title, however, were written at the time when he resigned his place as pastor of the Second Church. Mr. Emerson's friend, Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, relates that when they were making the home voyage from England. together in 1873, Mr. Emerson showed him his pocket-compass, which he said he carried with him in travelling, and added, 66 I like to hold the god in my hands." NAPLES and ROME. Pages 395 and 396. Journal, Divinity Hall, November, 1827. "Don't you see you are the Universe to yourself? You carry your fortunes in your own hand. Change of place won't mend the matter. You will weave the same web at Pernambuco as at Boston, if you have only learned how to make one texture." Journal, 1834. "Remember the Sunday morning in Naples when I said, This moment is the truest vision, the best spectacle I have seen amid all the wonders; and this moment, this vision, I might have had in my own closet in Boston.'"' "Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go." - Self-Reliance. WEBSTER. Page 398. The first of these fragments on New England's idol· - until his apostasy to the cause of human Freedom, in the interests of Union I was the last verse of those beginning, Has God on thee conferred A bodily presence mean as Paul's, printed a few pages earlier in this book. The second was the best passage in the Phi Beta Kappa poem, not otherwise remarkable. The third was written sadly after Webster's death. INDEX OF FIRST LINES A dull uncertain brain, 389. A patch of meadow upland, 369. A sterner errand to the silken troop, A subtle chain of countless rings, 281. A train of gay and clouded days, Ah Fate, cannot a man, 383. Ah, not to me those dreams belong! Atom from atom yawns as far, 339. Be of good cheer, brave spirit; stead- Because I was content with these Blooms the laurel which belongs, Boon Nature yields each day a brag never grew, 125. Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Burly, dozing humble-bee, 38. All day the waves assailed the rock, But God said, 114. 345. But if thou do thy best, 356. Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is But Nature whistled with all her lonely too, 396. Already blushes on thy cheek, 196. And Ellen, when the graybeard years, And I behold once more, 385. Announced by all the trumpets of Around the man who seeks a noble Can rules or tutors educate, 273. Askest, 'How long thou shalt stay?' 12. As sings the pine-tree in the wind, 297. As sunbeams stream through liberal As the drop feeds its fated flower, 355. Dark flower of Cheshire garden, Darlings of children and of bard, 343. Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Daughters of Time, the hypocritic |