Ralph Waldo Emerson

The green grass is bowing,
The morning wind is in it;
'T is a tune worth thy knowing,
Though it change every minute.'T is a tune of the Spring;…

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,…

"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.

Mortal mixed of middle clay,
Attempered to the night and day,
Interchangeable with things,
Needs no amulets nor rings.…

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

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 And a…

Bulkeley,
Hunt,
Willard,
Hosmer,

Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.…

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,

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

Thousand minstrels woke within me,
Our music's in the hills; —Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-colored rills.
Up!—If thou knew'st who

Each the herald is who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate;…

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

I cannot spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the Line,
All between that works or grows,…

Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.Set not thy foot on graves;…

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

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

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.

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.

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.…

Thy trivial harp will never
Or fill my craving ear;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
Free, peremptory, clear.

I serve you not, if you I follow,
Shadow-like, o'er hill and hollow,
And bend my fancy to your leading,
All too nimble for my treading.

1When the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
Who speeds to the woodland walks?
To birds and trees who talks?…

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