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    May-Day and Other Pieces
    May-Day and Other Pieces
    May-Day and Other Pieces
    Ebook177 pages1 hour

    May-Day and Other Pieces

    By Ralph Waldo Emerson

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    May-Day and Other Pieces
    Author

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a prolific essayist, public philosopher, poet, and political commentator who became world famous in his lifetime and influenced authors as diverse as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Friedrich Nietzsche, W. E. B. DuBois, and others.

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      Book preview

      May-Day and Other Pieces - Ralph Waldo Emerson

      May-Day, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

      The Project Gutenberg eBook, May-Day, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: May-Day

      and Other Pieces

      Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Release Date: May 31, 2005 [eBook #15963]

      Language: English

      Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

      ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAY-DAY***

      This eBook was prepared from the 1867 George Routledge and Sons edition by Les Bowler.

      MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES

      BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

      CONTENTS.

      MAY-DAY.

      THE ADIRONDACS.

      OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.

        BRAHMA

        NEMESIS

        FATE

        FREEDOM

        ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857

        BOSTON HYMN

        VOLUNTARIES

        LOVE AND THOUGHT

        LOVER’S PETITION

        UNA

        LETTERS

        RUBIES

        MERLIN’S SONG

        THE TEST

        SOLUTION

      NATURE AND LIFE.

        NATURE

        THE ROMANY GIRL

        DAYS

        THE CHARTIST’S COMPLAINT

        MY GARDEN

        THE TITMOUSE

        SEA-SHORE

        SONG OF NATURE

        TWO RIVERS

        WALDEINSAMKEIT

        TERMINUS

        THE PAST

        THE LAST FAREWELL

        IN MEMORIAM

      ELEMENTS.

        EXPERIENCE

        COMPENSATION

        POLITICS

        HEROISM

        CHARACTER

        CULTURE

        FRIENDSHIP

        BEAUTY

        MANNERS

        ART

        SPIRITUAL LAWS

        UNITY

        WORSHIP

      QUATRAINS.

      TRANSLATIONS.

      MAY-DAY.

        Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,

      With sudden passion languishing,

      Maketh all things softly smile,

      Painteth pictures mile on mile,

      Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,

      Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

      Girls are peeling the sweet willow,

      Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,

      And troops of boys

      Shouting with whoop and hilloa,

      And hip, hip three times three.

      The air is full of whistlings bland;

      What was that I heard

      Out of the hazy land?

      Harp of the wind, or song of bird,

      Or clapping of shepherd’s hands,

      Or vagrant booming of the air,

      Voice of a meteor lost in day?

      Such tidings of the starry sphere

      Can this elastic air convey.

      Or haply ’t was the cannonade

      Of the pent and darkened lake,

      Cooled by the pendent mountain’s shade,

      Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,

      Afflicted moan, and latest hold

      Even unto May the iceberg cold.

      Was it a squirrel’s pettish bark,

      Or clarionet of jay? or hark,

      Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,

      Steering north with raucous cry

      Through tracts and provinces of sky,

      Every night alighting down

      In new landscapes of romance,

      Where darkling feed the clamorous clans

      By lonely lakes to men unknown.

      Come the tumult whence it will,

      Voice of sport, or rush of wings,

      It is a sound, it is a token

      That the marble sleep is broken,

      And a change has passed on things.

        Beneath the calm, within the light,

      A hid unruly appetite

      Of swifter life, a surer hope,

      Strains every sense to larger scope,

      Impatient to anticipate

      The halting steps of aged Fate.

      Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl:

      When Nature falters, fain would zeal

      Grasp the felloes of her wheel,

      And grasping give the orbs another whirl.

      Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball!

      And sun this frozen side,

      Bring hither back the robin’s call,

      Bring back the tulip’s pride.

        Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?

      The hardy bunting does not chide;

      The blackbirds make the maples ring

      With social cheer and jubilee;

      The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee,

      The robins know the melting snow;

      The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,

      Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,

      Secure the osier yet will hide

      Her callow brood in mantling leaves;

      And thou, by science all undone,

      Why only must thy reason fail

      To see the southing of the sun?

        As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,

      So Spring will not, foolish fond,

      Mix polar night with tropic glow,

      Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,

      Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,

      But she has the temperance

      Of the gods, whereof she is one,—

      Masks her treasury of heat

      Under east-winds crossed with sleet.

      Plants and birds and humble creatures

      Well accept her rule austere;

      Titan-born, to hardy natures

      Cold is genial and dear.

      As Southern wrath to Northern right

      Is but straw to anthracite;

      As in the day of sacrifice,

      When heroes piled the pyre,

      The dismal Massachusetts ice

      Burned more than others’ fire,

      So Spring guards with surface cold

      The garnered heat of ages old:

      Hers to sow the seed of bread,

      That man and all the kinds be fed;

      And, when the sunlight fills the hours,

      Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.

        The world rolls round,—mistrust it not,—

      Befalls again what once befell;

      All things return, both sphere and mote,

      And I shall hear my bluebird’s note,

      And dream the dream of Auburn dell.

        When late I walked, in earlier days,

      All was stiff and stark;

      Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,

      In the sky no spark;

      Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,

      Struggling through the drifted roads;

      The whited desert knew me not,

      Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;

      The summer dells, by genius haunted,

      One arctic moon had disenchanted.

      All the sweet secrets therein hid

      By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.

      Eldest mason, Frost, had piled,

      With wicked ingenuity,

      Swift cathedrals in the wild;

      The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts

      In the star-lit minster aisled.

      I found no joy: the icy wind

      Might rule the forest to his mind.

      Who would freeze in frozen brakes?

      Back to books and sheltered home,

      And wood-fire flickering on the walls,

      To hear, when, ’mid our talk and games,

      Without the baffled north-wind calls.

      But soft! a sultry morning breaks;

      The cowslips make the brown brook gay;

      A happier hour, a longer day.

      Now the sun leads in the May,

      Now desire of action wakes,

      And the wish to roam.

        The caged linnet in the Spring

      Hearkens for the choral glee,

      When his fellows on the wing

      Migrate from the Southern Sea;

      When trellised grapes their flowers unmask,

      And the new-born tendrils twine,

      The old wine darkling in the cask

      Feels the bloom on the living vine,

      And bursts the hoops at hint of Spring:

      And so, perchance, in Adam’s race,

      Of Eden’s bower some dream-like trace

      Survived the Flight, and swam

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