Ralph Waldo Emerson Poems

Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate;
...

I.
Winters know
Easily to shed the snow,
And the untaught Spring is wise
...

The sense of the world is short, -
Long and various the report, -
To love and be beloved;
Men and gods have not outlearned it;
...

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 hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
...

The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
...

Who gave thee, O Beauty!
The keys of this breast,
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
...

Why should I keep holiday,
When other men have none?
Why but because when these are gay,
I sit and mourn alone.
...

It is time to be old,
To take in sail:--
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
...

BRING me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through
Under the Andes to the Cape,
...

I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
...