RALPH WALDO EMERSON

1803-1882

EMERSON in the opinion of his own generation ranked next to Carlyle as a thinker. As a thinker he still is held, and justly, to be profound. The larger part in bulk of his literary life was devoted to the composition of essays and lectures. To a great number even of his admirers he is unknown as a poet. Yet I should be much surprised to learn that he did not value himself as a poet chiefly. If so, fallible as are authors on the proportionate value of their works, I believe he would in his preference have judged wisely. He might be, probably has already been, replaced as a philosopher; he could scarcely be as a poet. Literature would less easily do without Woodnotes, Forerunners, Bacchus, Monadnoc, than historical and critical science without Representative Men or Nature.

Deliberately he vowed himself to poetry, with a full sense of the obligations, even the divinity, of the calling. He became a voice with a message from the higher Powers. The poet must be mute until they unseal his mouth : Ye taught my lips a single speech,

And a thousand silences.1

He need not sail the seas, or search humanity for sages to instruct him. At the destined moment the Angel is at hand :

Behold he watches at the door!
Behold his shadow on the floor!
Seek not beyond thy cottage wall
Redeemers that can yield thee all;

While thou sittest at thy door
On the desert's yellow floor,
Listening to the gray-haired crones,
Foolish gossips, ancient drones,
Saadi, see! they rise in stature
To the height of mighty Nature,
And the secret stands revealed
Fraudulent Time in vain concealed,-
That blessed gods in servile masks

Plied for thee thy household tasks.2

Let him dwell alone, not minding the reproach of sloth for folding his arms beside the woodland brook :

There was never mystery

But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history

But birds tell it in the bowers.3

The pine-tree sings to him:

'Speak not thy speech my boughs among;
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;
My hours are peaceful centuries.
Talk no more with feeble tongue;

No more the fool of space and time,
Come weave with me a nobler rhyme.
Only thy Americans

Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,

But the runes that I rehearse

Understands the universe;

The least breath my boughs which tossed

Brings again the Pentecost,

To every soul resounding clear

In a voice of solemn cheer,—

'Am I not thine? Are not these thine ?'

And they reply, 'Forever mine!

Come learn with me the fatal song

Which knits the world in music strong,
Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,

Of things with things, of times with times,

Primeval chimes of sun and shade,
Of sound and echo, man and maid,
The land reflected in the flood,
Body with shadow still pursued,
For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune;
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy,
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake!

But it carves the bow of beauty there,

And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

The wood is wiser far than thou ;

The wood and wave each other know.

Not unrelated, unaffied,

But to each thought and thing allied,

Is perfect Nature's every part,

Rooted in the mighty Heart.' 4

Spirit voices, though whence he never discovers, are continually sounding in his ear, to direct him on his way: Long I followed happy guides,

I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day,
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Flowers they strew, I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument

Leaves on the wind melodious trace;
Yet I could never see their face.

I met many travellers,

Who the road had surely kept;

They saw not my fine revellers,

These had crossed them while they slept.
Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,
Though they are not overtaken;

In sleep their jubilant troop is near,

I tuneful voices overhear;

Their near camp my spirit knows
By signs gracious as rainbows.
I thenceforward, and long after,
Listen for their harp-like laughter,
And carry in my heart, for days,
Peace that hallows rudest ways.5

The pursuit after beauty and truth, though it has its solaces, is long, and never more than partially successful. The end is not, though the God will refresh him awhile with the cup of

Wine which Music is,

That I, drinking this,

Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;

Kings unborn shall walk with me;

And the poor grass shall plot and plan

What it will do when it is man.

Quickened so, will I unlock

Every crypt of every rock."

Still, will darkness and dumbness be. Although by happy

fits,

The God's will sallies free,

And the dull idiot might see

The flowing fortunes of a thousand years,

Sudden, at unawares,

Self-moved, fly-to the doors,

Nor sword of angels could reveal

What they conceal."

The poet must learn to rule, and. as a Sovereign, he proclaims his royal edicts:

Like the Supreme Pontiff, he is servus servorum also, and

must learn to obey; mindful always that he is but a minister executing Another's behest. It is the lot of all great souls:

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew ;--
The conscious stone to beauty grew,

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,

And through the priest the mind inspires.9

Even to him, chosen though he be, only half-truths are disclosed. Existence is a Sphinx, constantly asking riddles beyond his power of guessing:

Thou art the unanswered question;

Couldst see thy proper eye,

Always it asketh, asketh;

And each answer is a lie.10

Disappointment surely awaits him and his hearers, if he

will not understand that

All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Sitting at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even ;

He sings the song, but it cheers not now,

For I did not bring home the river and sky ;—
He sang to my ear,—they sang to my eye.11

He has no right to expect payment for his worship of
Love not blind, but the