THEY brought me rubies from the mine, And held them to the sun; I said, they are drops of frozen wine From Eden's vats that run. I looked again,--I thought them hearts Of friends to friends unknown; Tides that should warm each neighboring life Are locked in sparkling stone. But fire to thaw that ruddy snow, To break enchanted ice, And give love's scarlet tides to flow,-- When shall that sun arise? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Rhodora: On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?
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 red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. 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, 0 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. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt, crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays... ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driven o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Mauger the farmer's sigh; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night work, The frolic architecture of the snow. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, I am the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love thy music, mellow bell, I love thine iron chime, To life or death, to heaven or hell, Which calls the sons of Time. Thy voice upon the deep The home-bound sea-boy hails, It charms his cares to sleep, It cheers him as he sails. To house of God and heavenly joys Thy summons called our sires, And good men thought thy sacred voice Disarmed the thunder's fires. And soon thy music, sad death-bell, Shall lift its notes once more, And mix my requiem with the wind That sweeps my native shore. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
IF I could put my woods in song And tell what's there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng, And leave the cities void. In my plot no tulips blow,-- Snow-loving pines and oaks instead; And rank the savage maples grow From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red. My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound. Here once the Deluge ploughed, Laid the terraces, one by one; Ebbing later whence it flowed, They bleach and dry in the sun. The sowers made haste to depart,-- The wind and the birds which sowed it; Not for fame, nor by rules of art, Planted these, and tempests flowed it. Waters that wash my garden-side Play not in Nature's lawful web, They heed not moon or solar tide,-- Five years elapse from flood to ebb. Hither hasted, in old time, Jove, And every god,--none did refuse; And be sure at last came Love, And after Love, the Muse. Keen ears can catch a syllable, As if one spake to another, In the hemlocks tall, untamable, And what the whispering grasses smother. Ĉolian harps in the pine Ring with the song of the Fates; Infant Bacchus in the vine,-- Far distant yet his chorus waits. Canst thou copy in verse one chime Of the wood-bell's peal and cry, Write in a book the morning's prime, Or match with words that tender sky? Wonderful verse of the gods, Of one import, of varied tone; They chant the bliss of their abodes To man imprisoned in his own. Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear Seldom in this low life's round Are unsealed, that he may hear. Wandering voices in the air And murmurs in the wold Speak what I cannot declare, Yet cannot all withhold. When the shadow fell on the lake, The whirlwind in ripples wrote Air-bells of fortune that shine and break, And omens above thought. But the meanings cleave to the lake, Cannot be carried in book or urn; Go thy ways now, come later back, On waves and hedges still they burn. These the fates of men forecast, Of better men than live to-day; If who can read them comes at last He will spell in the sculpture,'Stay.' ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
