Showing posts with label Ralph Waldo Emerson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ralph Waldo Emerson. Show all posts

Saturday, 9 November 2024

Saturday's Good Reading: “Woodnotes I” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (in English)

 


1

When the pine tosses its cones

To the song of its waterfall tones,

Who speeds to the woodland walks?

To birds and trees who talks?

Cæsar of his leafy Rome,

There the poet is at home.

He goes to the river-side,—

Not hook nor line hath he;

He stands in the meadows wide,—

Nor gun nor scythe to see.

Sure some god his eye enchants:

What he knows nobody wants.

In the wood he travels glad,

Without better fortune had,

Melancholy without bad.

Knowledge this man prizes best

Seems fantastic to the rest:

Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,

Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds,

Boughs on which the wild bees settle,

Tints that spot the violet's petal,

Why Nature loves the number five,

And why the star-form she repeats:

Lover of all things alive,

Wonderer at all he meets,

Wonderer chiefly at himself,

Who can tell him what he is?

Or how meet in human elf

Coming and past eternities?

 

2

And such I knew, a forest seer,

A minstrel of the natural year,

Foreteller of the vernal ides,

Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,

A lover true, who knew by heart

Each joy the mountain dales impart;

It seemed that Nature could not raise

A plant in any secret place,

In quaking bog, on snowy hill,

Beneath the grass that shades the rill,

Under the snow, between the rocks,

In damp fields known to bird and fox.

But he would come in the very hour

It opened in its virgin bower,

As if a sunbeam showed the place,

And tell its long-descended race.

It seemed as if the breezes brought him,

It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;

As if by secret sight he knew

Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.

Many haps fall in the field

Seldom seen by wishful eyes,

But all her shows did Nature yield,

To please and win this pilgrim wise.

He saw the partridge drum in the woods;

He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;

He found the tawny thrushes' broods;

And the shy hawk did wait for him;

What others did at distance hear,

And guessed within the thicket's gloom,

Was shown to this philosopher,

And at his bidding seemed to come.

 

3

In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang

Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;

He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon

The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;

Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,

And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.

He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,

The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,

And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,

Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.

He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,

With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls,—

One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,

Declares the close of its green century.

Low lies the plant to whose creation went

Sweet influence from every element;

Whose living towers the years conspired to build,

Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.

Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,

He roamed, content alike with man and beast.

Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;

There the red morning touched him with its light.

Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,

So long he roved at will the boundless shade.

The timid it concerns to ask their way,

And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,

To make no step until the event is known,

And ills to come as evils past bemoan.

Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps

To spy what danger on his pathway creeps;

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,

His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;

Where his clear spirit leads him, there 's his road

By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.

 

4

'T was one of the charmèd days

When the genius of God doth flow;

The wind may alter twenty ways,

A tempest cannot blow;

It may blow north, it still is warm;

Or south, it still is clear;

Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;

Or west, no thunder fear.

The musing peasant, lowly great,

Beside the forest water sate;

The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown

Composed the network of his throne;

The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,

Was burnished to a floor of glass,

Painted with shadows green and proud

Of the tree and of the cloud.

He was the heart of all the scene;

On him the sun looked more serene;

To hill and cloud his face was known,—

It seemed the likeness of their own;

They knew by secret sympathy

The public child of earth and sky.

'You ask,' he said, 'what guide

Me through trackless thickets led,

Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide.

I found the water's bed.

The watercourses were my guide;

I travelled grateful by their side,

Or through their channel dry;

They led me through the thicket damp,

Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp,

Through beds of granite cut my road,

And their resistless friendship showed.

The falling waters led me,

The foodful waters fed me,

And brought me to the lowest land,

Unerring to the ocean sand.

The moss upon the forest bark

Was pole-star when the night was dark;

The purple berries in the wood

Supplied me necessary food;

For Nature ever faithful is

To such as trust her faithfulness.

When the forest shall mislead me,

When the night and morning lie,

When sea and land refuse to feed me,

'T will be time enough to die;

Then will yet my mother yield

A pillow in her greenest field,

Nor the June flowers scorn to cover

The clay of their departed lover.'

Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Wednesday's Good Reading: "The Snow-Storm" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English).

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller 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 swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; 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.

Wednesday, 22 May 2024

Good Reading: "Berrying" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English).

'May be true what I had heard,—
Earth's a howling wilderness,
Truculent with fraud and force,'
Said I, strolling through the pastures,
And along the river-side.
Caught among the blackberry vines,
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet,
Pleasant fancies overtook me.
I said, 'What influence me preferred,
Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?'
The vines replied, 'And didst thou deem
No wisdom from our berries went?'

Wednesday, 10 April 2024

Good Reading: "The Humble-Bee" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English)

Burly, dozing humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.


Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of thy dominion!
Sailor of the atmosphere;
Swimmer through the waves of air;
Voyager of light and noon;
Epicurean of June;
Wait, I prithee, till I come
Within earshot of thy hum,—
All without is martyrdom.


When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shining haze
Silvers the horizon wall,
And with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
And infusing subtle heats,
Turns the sod to violets,
Thou, in sunny solitudes,
Rover of the underwoods,
The green silence dost displace
With thy mellow, breezy bass.


Hot midsummer's petted crone,
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone
Tells of countless sunny hours,
Long days, and solid banks of flowers;
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound
In Indian wildernesses found;
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.


Aught unsavory or unclean
Hath my insect never seen;
But violets and bilberry bells,
Maple-sap and daffodels,
Grass with green flag half-mast high,
Succory to match the sky,
Columbine with horn of honey,
Scented fern, and agrimony,
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue
And brier-roses, dwelt among;
All beside was unknown waste,
All was picture as he passed.


Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
When the fierce northwestern blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep;
Woe and want thou canst outsleep;
Want and woe, which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

Wednesday, 24 January 2024

Good Reading: "The Rhodora: on being asked, whencie is the flower?" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English)

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, O 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.

Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Good Reading: "Guy" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English)

 

Mortal mixed of middle clay,

Attempered to the night and day,

Interchangeable with things,

Needs no amulets nor rings.

Guy possessed the talisman

That all things from him began;

And as, of old, Polycrates

Chained the sunshine and the breeze,

So did Guy betimes discover

Fortune was his guard and lover;

In strange junctures, felt, with awe,

His own symmetry with law;

That no mixture could withstand

The virtue of his lucky hand.

He gold or jewel could not lose,

Nor not receive his ample dues.

Fearless Guy had never foes,

He did their weapons decompose.

Aimed at him, the blushing blade

Healed as fast the wounds it made.

If on the foeman fell his gaze,

Him it would straightway blind or craze,

In the street, if he turned round,

His eye the eye 't was seeking found.

It seemed his Genius discreet

Worked on the Maker's own receipt,

And made each tide and element

Stewards of stipend and of rent;

So that the common waters fell

As costly wine into his well.

He had so sped his wise affairs

That he caught Nature in his snares.

Early or late, the falling rain

Arrived in time to swell his grain;

Stream could not so perversely wind

But corn of Guy's was there to grind:

The siroc found it on its way,

To speed his sails, to dry his hay;

And the world's sun seemed to rise

To drudge all day for Guy the wise.

In his rich nurseries, timely skill

Strong crab with nobler blood did fill;

The zephyr in his garden rolled

From plum-trees vegetable gold;

And all the hours of the year

With their own harvest honored were.

There was no frost but welcome came,

Nor freshet, nor midsummer flame.

Belonged to wind and world the toil

And venture, and to Guy the oil.

Saturday, 18 November 2023

Good Reading: "Hamatreya" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English)

 HAMATREYA

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, ''T is mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'


Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
'This suits me for a pasture; that 's my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.
'T is good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.'
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says:—

EARTH-SONG

'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide—
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.


'The lawyer's deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.


'Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
But the heritors?—
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.


'They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?'

When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.

Saturday, 2 September 2023

Good Reading: "Destiny" by Ralph Waldo Emerson (in English)


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.

There 's a melody born of melody,

Which melts the world into a sea.

Toil could never compass it;

Art its height could never hit;

It came never out of wit;

But a music music-born

Well may Jove and Juno scorn.

Thy beauty, if it lack the fire

Which drives me mad with sweet desire,

What boots it? What the soldier's mail,

Unless he conquer and prevail?

What all the goods thy pride which lift,

If thou pine for another's gift?

Alas! that one is born in blight,

Victim of perpetual slight:

When thou lookest on his face,

Thy heart saith, 'Brother, go thy ways!

None shall ask thee what thou doest,

Or care a rush for what thou knowest,

Or listen when thou repliest,

Or remember where thou liest,

Or how thy supper is sodden;'

And another is born

To make the sun forgotten.

Surely he carries a talisman

Under his tongue;

Broad his shoulders are and strong;

And his eye is scornful,

Threatening and young.

I hold it of little matter

Whether your jewel be of pure water,

A rose diamond or a white,

But whether it dazzle me with light.

I care not how you are dressed,

In coarsest weeds or in the best;

Nor whether your name is base or brave:

Nor for the fashion of your behavior;

But whether you charm me,

Bid my bread feed and my fire warm me

And dress up Nature in your favor.

One thing is forever good;

That one thing is Success,—

Dear to the Eumenides,

And to all the heavenly brood.

Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,

Carries the eagles, and masters the sword.

Wednesday, 26 July 2023

Good Reading: "To J.W." by Ralph W. Emerson (in English)

 TO J. W.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.


Set not thy foot on graves;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable Time
And Nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.


Set not thy foot on graves;
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament,
His myrrh, and wine, and rings,


His sheet of lead,
And trophies burièd:
Go, get them where he earned them when alive;
As resolutely dig or dive.


Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand:
'T will soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!

Saturday, 17 June 2023

Good Reading: "Mithridates" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English)

I cannot spare water or wine,
⁠Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the Line,
⁠All between that works or grows,
Every thing is kin of mine.


Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes;—


From all natures, sharp and slimy,
⁠Salt and basalt, wild and tame:
Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
⁠Bird, and reptile, be my game.


Ivy for my fillet band;
Blinding dog-wood in my hand;
Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,
And the prussic juice to lull me;
Swing me in the upas boughs,
Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.


Too long shut in strait and few,
Thinly dieted on dew,
I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humors shift it,
As you spin a cherry.
O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry!
O all you virtues, methods, mights,
Means, appliances, delights,
Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,
Smug routine, and things allowed,
Minorities, things under cloud!
Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me!

Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Good Reading: "Alphonso of Castile" by Ralph W. Emerson (in English)

I, Alphonso, live and learn,
Seeing Nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind;
Lemons run to leaves and rind;
Meagre crop of figs and limes;
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies.
Imps, at high midsummer, blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek or skin of man.
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of my blood;—
They discredit Adamhood.
Eyes of gods! ye must have seen,
O'er your ramparts as ye lean,
The general debility;
Of genius the sterility;
Mighty projects countermanded;
Rash ambition, brokenhanded;
Puny man and scentless rose
Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
Rebuild or ruin: either fill
Of vital force the wasted rill,
Or tumble all again in heap
To weltering Chaos and to sleep.


Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry,
Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That mortals miss the loyal heats,
Which drove them erst to social feats;
Now, to a savage selfness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one;
With science poorly mask their hurt;
And vex the gods with question pert,
Immensely curious whether you
Still are rulers, or Mildew?


Masters, I 'm in pain with you;
Masters, I 'll be plain with you;
In my palace of Castile,
I, a king, for kings can feel.
There my thoughts the matter roll,
And solve and oft resolve the whole.
And, for I 'm styled Alphonse the Wise,
Ye shall not fail for sound advice.
Before ye want a drop of rain,
Hear the sentiment of Spain.


You have tried famine: no more try it;
Ply us now with a full diet;
Teach your pupils now with plenty,
For one sun supply us twenty.
I have thought it thoroughly over,—
State of hermit, state of lover;
We must have society,
We cannot spare variety.
Hear you, then, celestial fellows!
Fits not to be overzealous;
Steads not to work on the clean jump,
Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump.
Men and gods are too extense;
Could you slacken and condense?
Your rank overgrowths reduce
Till your kinds abound with juice?
Earth, crowded, cries, 'Too many men!'
My counsel is, kill nine in ten,
And bestow the shares of all
On the remnant decimal.
Add their nine lives to this cat;
Stuff their nine brains in one hat;
Make his frame and forces square
With the labors he must dare;
Thatch his flesh, and even his years
With the marble which he rears.
There, growing slowly old at ease
No faster than his planted trees,
He may, by warrant of his age,
In schemes of broader scope engage.
So shall ye have a man of the sphere
Fit to grace the solar year.

Saturday, 11 March 2023

Good Reading: "The Sphinx" by Ralph W. Emerson

The Sphinx is drowsy,

          Her wings are furled:

Her ear is heavy,

          She broods on the world.

"Who'll tell me my secret,

          The ages have kept?—

I awaited the seer

          While they slumbered and slept:—

 

"The fate of the man-child,

          The meaning of man;

Known fruit of the unknown;

          Dædalian plan;

Out of sleeping a waking,

          Out of waking a sleep;

Life death overtaking;

          Deep underneath deep?

 

"Erect as a sunbeam,

          Upspringeth the palm;

The elephant browses,

          Undaunted and calm;

In beautiful motion

          The thrush plies his wings;

Kind leaves of his covert,

          Your silence he sings.

 

"The waves, unashamèd,

          In difference sweet,

Play glad with the breezes,

          Old playfellows meet;

The journeying atoms,

          Primordial wholes,

Firmly draw, firmly drive,

          By their animate poles.

 

"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,

          Plant, quadruped, bird,

By one music enchanted,

          One deity stirred,—

Each the other adorning,

          Accompany still;

Night veileth the morning,

          The vapor the hill.

 

"The babe by its mother

          Lies bathèd in joy;

Glide its hours uncounted,—

          The sun is its toy;

Shines the peace of all being,

          Without cloud, in its eyes;

And the sum of the world

          In soft miniature lies.

 

"But man crouches and blushes,

          Absconds and conceals;

He creepeth and peepeth,

          He palters and steals;

Infirm, melancholy,

          Jealous glancing around,

An oaf, an accomplice,

          He poisons the ground.

 

"Out spoke the great mother,

          Beholding his fear;—

At the sound of her accents

          Cold shuddered the sphere:—

'Who has drugged my boy's cup?

          Who has mixed my boy's bread?

Who, with sadness and madness,

          Has turned my child's head?'"

 

I heard a poet answer

          Aloud and cheerfully,

'Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges

          Are pleasant songs to me.

Deep love lieth under

          These pictures of time;

They fade in the light of

          Their meaning sublime.

 

"The fiend that man harries

          Is love of the Best;

Yawns the pit of the Dragon,

          Lit by rays from the Blest.

The Lethe of Nature

          Can't trance him again,

Whose soul sees the perfect,

          Which his eyes seek in vain.

 

"To vision profounder,

          Man's spirit must dive;

His aye-rolling orb

          At no goal will arrive;

The heavens that now draw him

          With sweetness untold,

Once found,—for new heavens

          He spurneth the old.

 

"Pride ruined the angels,

          Their shame them restores;

Lurks the joy that is sweetest

          In stings of remorse.

Have I a lover

          Who is noble and free?—

I would he were nobler

          Than to love me.

 

"Eterne alternation

          Now follows, now flies;

And under pain, pleasure,—

          Under pleasure, pain lies.

Love works at the centre,

          Heart-heaving alway;

Forth speed the strong pulses

          To the borders of day.

 

"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;

          Thy sight is growing blear;

Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx,

          Her muddy eyes to clear!"

The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,—

          Said, "Who taught thee me to name?

I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow;

          Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

 

"Thou art the unanswered question;

          Couldst see thy proper eye,

Alway it asketh, asketh;

          And each answer is a lie.

So take thy quest through nature,

          It through thousand natures ply;

Ask on, thou clothed eternity;

          Time is the false reply."

 

Uprose the merry Sphinx,

          And crouched no more in stone;

She melted into purple cloud,

          She silvered in the moon;

She spired into a yellow flame;

          She flowered in blossoms red;

She flowed into a foaming wave:

          She stood Monadnoc's head.

 

Thorough a thousand voices

          Spoke the universal dame;

"Who telleth one of my meanings

          Is master of all I am."