Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Go thou to thy learned task,     I stay with the flowers of Spring:     Do thou of the Ages ask     What me the Hours will bring."

"Each the herald is who wrote     His rank, and quartered his own coat.     There is no king nor sovereign state     That can fix a hero's rate;"

"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.     Th"

"Let me go where'er I will,     I hear a sky-born music still:     It sounds from all things old,     It sounds from all things young,     From"

"Why should I keep holiday     When other men have none?     Why but because, when these are gay,     I sit and mourn alone?     And why, when"

"Though her eye seek other forms     And a glad delight below,     Yet the love the world that warms     Bids for me her bosom glow.     She m"

"Give me truths;     For I am weary of the surfaces,     And die of inanition. If I knew     Only the herbs and simples of the wood,     Rue, c"

"Bring me wine, but wine which never grew     In the belly of the grape,     Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through,     Under the An"

"Who saw the hid beginnings     When Chaos and Order strove,     Or who can date the morning.     The purple flaming of love?     I saw the hi"

"As sunbeams stream through liberal space     And nothing jostle or displace,     So waved the pine-tree through my thought     And fanned the d"

"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,     Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,     And marching single in an endless file,     Bring dia"

"Every thought is public,     Every nook is wide;     Thy gossips spread each whisper,     And the gods from side to side."

"A ruddy drop of manly blood     The surging sea outweighs,     The world uncertain comes and goes;     The lover rooted stays.     I fancied h"

"Dark flower of Cheshire garden,     Red evening duly dyes     Thy sombre head with rosy hues     To fix far-gazing eyes.     Well the Planter"

"The South-wind brings     Life, sunshine and desire,     And on every mount and meadow     Breathes aromatic fire;     But over the dead he ha"

"Give all to love;     Obey thy heart;     Friends, kindred, days,     Estate, good-fame,     Plans, credit and the Muse,--     Nothing refuse"

"Mine are the night and morning,     The pits of air, the gulf of space,     The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,     The innumerable days."

"I do not count the hours I spend     In wandering by the sea;     The forest is my loyal friend,     Like God it useth me.     In plains that"

"The cup of life is not so shallow     That we have drained the best,     That all the wine at once we swallow     And lees make all the rest."

"Long I followed happy guides,     I could never reach their sides;     Their step is forth, and, ere the day     Breaks up their leaguer, and a"

"I have trod this path a hundred times     With idle footsteps, crooning rhymes.     I know each nest and web-worm's tent,     The fox-hole whic"

"I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea     Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?     Am I not always here, thy summer home?     Is not"

"He who has no hands     Perforce must use his tongue;     Foxes are so cunning     Because they are not strong."

"Can rules or tutors educate     The semigod whom we await?     He must be musical,     Tremulous, impressional,     Alive to gentle influence"

"The lords of life, the lords of life,--     I saw them pass     In their own guise,     Like and unlike,     Portly and grim,--     Use and S"

"Think me not unkind and rude     That I walk alone in grove and glen;     I go to the god of the wood     To fetch his word to men.     Tax n"

"The prosperous and beautiful     To me seem not to wear     The yoke of conscience masterful,     Which galls me everywhere.     I cannot sha"

"Test of the poet is knowledge of love,     For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;     Never was poet, of late or of yore,     Who was not tremu"

"It is time to be old,     To take in sail:--     The god of bounds,     Who sets to seas a shore,     Came to me in his fatal rounds,     And"

"[Knows he who tills this lonely field     To reap its scanty corn,     What mystic fruit his acres yield     At midnight and at morn?]     Th"

"Each spot where tulips prank their state     Has drunk the life-blood of the great;     The violets yon field which stain     Are moles of beau"

"'May be true what I had heard,--     Earth's a howling wilderness,     Truculent with fraud and force,'     Said I, strolling through the pastu"

"Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?     Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.     If curses be the wage of love,     Hide in thy skies,"

"Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?     Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?     At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?"

"Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown     Of thee from the hill-top looking down;     The heifer that lows in the upland farm,"

"I am the Muse who sung alway     By Jove, at dawn of the first day.     Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought     To fire the stagnant ear"

"Tell me, maiden, dost thou use     Thyself thro' Nature to diffuse?     All the angles of the coast     Were tenanted by thy sweet ghost,"

"How much, preventing God, how much I owe     To the defences thou hast round me set;     Example, custom, fear, occasion slow,--     These scor"

"Who knows this or that?     Hark in the wall to the rat:     Since the world was, he has gnawed;     Of his wisdom, of his fraud     What dost"

"I like a church; I like a cowl;     I love a prophet of the soul;     And on my heart monastic aisles     Fall like sweet strains, or pensive s"

"A train of gay and clouded days     Dappled with joy and grief and praise,     Beauty to fire us, saints to save,     Escort us to a little gra"

"He took the color of his vest     From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast;     For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,     So walks the woodman, un"

"Darlings of children and of bard,     Perfect kinds by vice unmarred,     All of worth and beauty set     Gems in Nature's cabinet;     These"

"Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a mind serene;--     A woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned queen;     And the second,"

"Not in their houses stand the stars,     But o'er the pinnacles of thine!"

"Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,     With sudden passion languishing,     Teaching Barren moors to smile,     Painting pictures mile o"

"Henceforth, please God, forever I forego     The yoke of men's opinions. I will be     Light-hearted as a bird, and live with God.     I find h"

"Power that by obedience grows,     Knowledge which its source not knows,     Wave which severs whom it bears     From the things which he compa"

"Your picture smiles as first it smiled;     The ring you gave is still the same;     Your letter tells, O changing child!     No tidings since"

"This is he, who, felled by foes,     Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:     He to captivity was sold,     But him no prison-bars would hol"

"FROM THE PERSIAN OF KERMANI     In Farsistan the violet spreads     Its leaves to the rival sky;     I ask how far is the Tigris flood,     A"

"I see all human wits     Are measured but a few;     Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits,     Lone as the blessed Jew."

"October woods wherein     The boy's dream comes to pass,     And Nature squanders on the boy her pomp,     And crowns him with a more than roya"

"That you are fair or wise is vain,     Or strong, or rich, or generous;     You must add the untaught strain     That sheds beauty on the rose."

"Illusion works impenetrable,     Weaving webs innumerable,     Her gay pictures never fail,     Crowds each on other, veil on veil,     Charme"

"True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet,     Expound the Vedas of the violet,     Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop,     See the p"

"SUNG AT THE SECOND CHURCH, AT THE ORDINATION OF REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS     We love the venerable house     Our fathers built to God;--     In h"

"I bear in youth the sad infirmities     That use to undo the limb and sense of age;     It hath pleased Heaven to break the dream of bliss"

"Ere he was born, the stars of fate     Plotted to make him rich and great:     When from the womb the babe was loosed,     The gate of gifts be"

"I     Of Merlin wise I learned a song,--     Sing it low or sing it loud,     It is mightier than the strong,     And punishes the proud."