The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Poems

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Houghton Mifflin, 1904
 

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Page 41 - 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.
Page 7 - 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.
Page 42 - 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.
Page 296 - Though love repine and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply: " 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.
Page 207 - So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.
Page 7 - Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves and feathers from her breast ? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell ? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads ? Such and so grew these holy piles, While love and terror laid the tiles.
Page 54 - 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.
Page 409 - The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken ; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.
Page 281 - The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery: Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west.
Page 76 - Though loath to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, Or statesman's rant. If I refuse My study for their politique, Which at the best is trick, The angry Muse Puts confusion in my brain. But who is he that prates Of the culture of mankind, Of better arts and life? Go, blindworm, go, Behold the famous States Harrying Mexico With rifle and with knife!

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