Poems - Household Edition | Page 2

illuminated by the episode of his first love. Not for their poetical merit, except in flashes, but for the light they throw on the growth of his thought and character are they included.
In this volume the course of the Muse, as Emerson tells it, is pursued with regard to his own poems.
I hang my verses in the wind,?Time and tide their faults will find.
EDWARD W. EMERSON.
March 12, 1904.

CONTENTS
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
POEMS
GOOD-BYE?EACH AND ALL?THE PROBLEM?TO RHEA?THE VISIT?URIEL?THE WORLD-SOUL?THE SPHINX?ALPHONSO OF CASTILE?MITHRIDATES?TO J.W.?DESTINY?GUY?HAMATREYA?THE RHODORA?THE HUMBLE-BEE?BERRYING?THE SNOW-STORM?WOODNOTES I?WOODNOTES II?MONADNOC?FABLE?ODE?ASTRAEA?éTIENNE DE LA BOéCE?COMPENSATION?FORBEARANCE?THE PARK?FORERUNNERS?SURSUM CORDA?ODE TO BEAUTY?GIVE ALL TO LOVE?TO ELLEN AT THE SOUTH?TO ELLEN?TO EVA?LINES?THE VIOLET?THE AMULET?THINE EYES STILL SHINED?EROS?HERMIONE?INITIAL, DAEMONIC AND CELESTIAL LOVE?I. THE INITIAL LOVE?II. THE DAEMONIC LOVE?III. THE CELESTIAL LOVE?THE APOLOGY?MERLIN I?MERLIN II?BACCHUS?MEROPS?THE HOUSE?SAADI?HOLIDAYS?XENOPHANES?THE DAY'S RATION?BLIGHT?MUSKETAQUID?DIRGE?THRENODY?CONCORD HYMN
MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES
MAY-DAY?THE ADIRONDACS?BRAHMA?NEMESIS?FATE?FREEDOM?ODE?BOSTON HYMN?VOLUNTARIES?LOVE AND THOUGHT?UNA?BOSTON?LETTERS?RUBIES?MERLIN'S SONG?THE TEST?SOLUTION?HYMN?NATURE I?NATURE II?THE ROMANY GIRL?DAYS?MY GARDEN?THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT?THE TITMOUSE?THE HARP?SEASHORE?SONG OF NATURE?TWO RIVERS?WALDEINSAMKEIT?TERMINUS?THE NUN'S ASPIRATION?APRIL?MAIDEN SPEECH OF THE AEOLIAN HARP?CUPIDO?THE PAST?THE LAST FAREWELL?IN MEMORIAM E.B.E.
ELEMENTS AND MOTTOES
EXPERIENCE?COMPENSATION?POLITICS?HEROISM?CHARACTER?CULTURE?FRIENDSHIP?SPIRITUAL LAWS?BEAUTY?MANNERS?ART?UNITY?WORSHIP?PRUDENCE?NATURE?THE INFORMING SPIRIT?CIRCLES?INTELLECT?GIFTS?PROMISE?CARITAS?POWER?WEALTH?ILLUSIONS
QUATRAINS AND TRANSLATIONS
QUATRAINS?TRANSLATIONS
APPENDIX
THE POET?FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND THE POETIC GIFT?FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND LIFE?NATURE?LIFE?THE BOHEMIAN HYMN?GRACE?INSIGHT?PAN?MONADNOC FROM AFAR?SEPTEMBER?EROS?OCTOBER?PETER'S FIELD?MUSIC?THE WALK?COSMOS?THE MIRACLE?THE WATERFALL?WALDEN?THE ENCHANTER?WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF GOETHE?RICHES?PHILOSOPHER?INTELLECT?LIMITS?INSCRIPTION FOR A WELL IN MEMORY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE WAR?THE EXILE
POEMS OF YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD
THE BELL?THOUGHT?PRAYER?TO-DAY?FAME?THE SUMMONS?THE RIVER?GOOD HOPE?LINES TO ELLEN?SECURITY?A MOUNTAIN GRAVE?A LETTER?HYMN?SELF-RELIANCE?WRITTEN IN NAPLES?WRITTEN AT ROME?WEBSTER
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
INDEX OF TITLES

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
The Emersons first appeared in the north of England, but Thomas, who landed in Massachusetts in 1638, came from Hertfordshire. He built soon after a house, sometimes railed the Saint's Rest, which still stands in Ipswich on the slope of Heart-break Hill, close by Labour-in-vain Creek. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the sixth in descent from him. He was born in Boston, in Summer Street, May 25, 1803. He was the third son of William Emerson, the minister of the First Church in Boston, whose father, William Emerson, had been the patriotic minister of Concord at the outbreak of the Revolution, and died a chaplain in the army. Ruth Haskins, the mother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was left a widow in 1811, with a family of five little boys. The taste of these boys was scholarly, and four of them went through the Latin School to Harvard College, and graduated there. Their mother was a person of great sweetness, dignity, and piety, bringing up her sons wisely and well in very straitened circumstances, and loved by them. Her husband's stepfather, Rev. Dr. Ripley of Concord, helped her, and constantly invited the boys to the Old Manse, so that the woods and fields along the Concord River were first a playground and then the background of the dreams of their awakening imaginations.
Born in the city, Emerson's young mind first found delight in poems and classic prose, to which his instincts led him as naturally as another boy's would to go fishing, but his vacations in the country supplemented these by giving him great and increasing love of nature. In his early poems classic imagery is woven into pictures of New England woodlands. Even as a little boy he had the habit of attempting flights of verse, stimulated by Milton, Pope, or Scott, and he and his mates took pleasure in declaiming to each other in barns and attics. He was so full of thoughts and fancies that he sought the pen instinctively, to jot them down.
At college Emerson did not shine as a scholar, though he won prizes for essays and declamations, being especially unfitted for mathematical studies, and enjoying the classics rather in a literary than grammatical way. And yet it is doubtful whether any man in his class used his time to better purpose with reference to his after life, for young Emerson's instinct led him to wide reading of works, outside the curriculum, that spoke directly to him. He had already formed the habit of writing in a journal, not the facts but the thoughts and inspirations of the day; often, also, good stories or poetical quotations, and scraps of his own verse.
On graduation from Harvard in the class of 1821, following the traditions of his family, Emerson resolved to study to be a minister, and meantime helped his older brother William in the support of the family by teaching in a school for young ladies in Boston, that the former had successfully established. The principal was twenty-one and the assistant nineteen years of age. For school-teaching on the usual lines Emerson was not fitted, and his youth and shyness prevented him from imparting his best gifts to his scholars. Years later, when, in his age, his old scholars assembled to greet him, he regretted that no hint had been brought into the school of what at that very time "I was writing every night in my chamber, my first thoughts on morals