Ralph Waldo Emerson Poems

Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great:
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell's measure or degree;
...

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
...

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

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
...

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.
...

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

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
...

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter "Little Prig."
Bun replied,
...

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
...

Was never form and never face
So sweet to SEYD as only grace
Which did not slumber like a stone,
But hovered gleaming and was gone.
...