Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,

It fell in the ancient periods    Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coin'd itself    Into calendar months and days
This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell

Sicut Patribus, sit Deus Nobis)The rocky nook with hilltops three Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea Took Boston in its arms;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore

Bulkeley,
Hunt,
Willard,
Hosmer,

Your picture smiles as first it smiled,
The ring you gave is still the same,
Your letter tells,
O changing child,

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

A ruddy drop of manly
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes;
The lover rooted stays

"May be true what I had heard,
Earth's a howling
Truculent with fraud and force,"Said I, strolling through the pastures,
And along the riverside

The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter "Little Prig
" Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year An...

Thousand minstrels woke within me,
Our music's in the hills; —Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-colored rills
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