Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poetry and Philosophy [1] Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who was a leading figure of the transcendentalist movement of the 19th century. [2] In his writings, he explores nature and the Over-Soul, the universal spirit that connects all things. [3] He believed the poet represents beauty and stands at the center of the world, announcing what no one else has foretold.

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
From “Nature” (1836)
Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all
that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all
other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature
and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses; — in its common and in its philosophical import.
In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur.
Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is
applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his
operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an
impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.
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To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very
superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the
child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who
has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth,
becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real
sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me.
…….
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no
calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed
by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-
ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of
God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances,
— master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In
the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape,
and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
From “The Over-Soul” (1841)
When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see
that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up,
and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come.
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is
that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-
soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart,
of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; (…) We live in
succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence;
the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep
power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in
every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are
one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these
are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read,
and by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man,
we can know what it saith.
………
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing,
but the light is all. A man is the fasade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly
call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but
misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through
his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes
through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the intellect
begins, when it would be something of itself. The weakness of the will begins, when the individual would be
something of himself. All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other
words, to engage us to obey.

2. From “The Poet” (1844)
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the
world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful
things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is
emperor in his own right. (…) The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think
primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also,
yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants
who bring building materials to an architect.
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate
into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but
we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.
The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though
imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable,
and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of
the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and
only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance
which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak
now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson – Poetry
Days
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

3. The Rhodora
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.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
From “Civil Disobedience” (1849)
Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but
conscience?--in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has
every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to
cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is
to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a
corporation on conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just;
and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice.
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The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. (…) In most cases
there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level
with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as
well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth
only as horses and dogs. (…) A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men--
serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are
commonly treated as enemies by it.
………
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a
step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and
enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from
which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining
a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor;
which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling
with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow men. A State which bore this
kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and
glorious State, which I have also imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.