Chapter Ralph Waldo Emerson of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

In poems like The Humble-Bee, The Snow-Storm, The Rhodora, Woodnotes, Monadnoc, Musketaquid, Emerson is at his best, and ranks next to Bryant, if not as his equal, among American nature poets. He describes the northward flow of Spring with its radiant life:--

"As poured the flood of the ancient sea
Spilling over mountain chains,
Bending forests as bends the sedge,
Faster flowing o'er the plains,--
A world-wide wave with a foaming edge
That rims the running silver sheet."¹

Of the dawn he writes:--

"O tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire."²

These are the phrases and figures of a true poet; but a large part of Emerson's verse is oracular, like the paradoxes in his prose. Hence it is that much is said derisively of such orphic breathings as we find in The Sphinx, and Brahma -- with its disconcerting

"If the red slayer think he slays,
   Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
   I keep, and pass, and turn again."¹

Subtly symbolic as this group of poems is, it appeals to the intellect, and appeals strongly when once the reader finds the key.

While Emerson never strikes the chord of passion, there is one poem -- and that one of his best -- wherein we feel the human heart-beat of a human grief. In 1842, the poet lost his little son, "a perfect little boy of five years and three months," he wrote Carlyle; "a few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all." In Threnody we have the calm, philosophic, yet very feeling expression of the father's experience. It is not disconsolate. To him who so often interpreted to others the mystic whisperings of the great mother teacher, there comes a response from Nature's heart:--

"Saying, What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found."

In Wartime.

Emerson's attitude on public matters during the period of agitation preceding the Civil War is interesting. His friends in the transcendental coterie were vigorous abolitionists. With characteristic self-restraint, Emerson refrained from violent utterance. He spoke against slavery, but not aggressively against the South. He proposed a plan to purchase the slaves from the planters, because "it is the only practical course, and is innocent." As the struggle developed, however, his position on the issue of the hour was perfectly clear. He stood with Wendell Phillips when the speakers were mobbed at a public meeting in Boston; and when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, January 1, 1863, he read the vigorous stanzas of his Boston Hymn. He paid an eloquent tribute to Lincoln in an address at Concord in April, 1865, and was the orator at the services held by Harvard College in memory of her sons fallen in the war -- when Lowell read his Commemoration Ode.

Later Life and Work.

Emerson's literary activity continued throughout a period of forty years. In 1868, 1869, and 1870, he delivered courses of lectures at Harvard which furnished the material for the volume entitled Natural History of Intellect. Society and Solitude was published in 1870. Among the twelve essays included under this title is the one on Books, in which occur the oft-quoted but somewhat dubious rules: "Never read any book that is not a year old. Never read any but famed books. Never read any but what you like." It is in the essay on Civilization of this series that we find the famous precept, "Hitch your wagon to a star!"