1 The first collected edition of Emerson's Poems, which bears the date 1847, and is listed under that year in the bibliographies, actually appeared in 1846.

? Remember the Sunday morning in Naples when I said, 'This moment is the truest vision, the best spectacle I have seen amid all the wonders; and this moment, this vision, I might have had in my own closet in Boston.' (EMERSON's Journal, 1834.)

Compare the essay on Self-Reliance: '

Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.'

Compare also The Day's Ration,' and Whittier's 'The Last Walk in Autumn.'

(The illustrative passages from Emerson's Journal given in these notes, and many of the parallel passages from Emerson's essays, are quoted by Mr. E. W. Emerson in his exceedingly valuable notes to the 'Centenary Edition' of the Poems, or in his Emerson in Concord.)

Not less than was the first; the all-wise God
Gilds a few points in every several life,
And as each flower upon the fresh hillside
And every colored petal of each flower,
Is sketched and dyed, each with a new de-
sign,

Its spot of purple, and its streak of brown, So each man's life shall have its proper lights,

And a few joys, a few peculiar charms,
For him round-in the melancholy hours
And reconcile him to the common days.
Not many men see beauty in the fogs
Of close low pine-woods in a river town;
Yet unto me not morn's magnificence,
Nor the red rainbow of a summer eve,
Nor Rome, nor joyful Paris, nor the halls
Of rich men blazing hospitable light,
Nor wit, nor eloquence,

song

-

no, nor even the

Besides, you need not be alone; the soul
Shall have society of its own rank.
Be great, be true, and all the Scipios,
The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome,
Shall flock to you and tarry by your side,
And comfort you with their high company.
Virtue alone is sweet society,

It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,
And opens you a welcome in them all.
You must be like them if you desire them,
Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim
Than wine or sleep or praise;

Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid,

3 Emerson's first wife, the Ellen' of the previous poems, died of consumption after they had been married only a year and a half.

Don't you see you are the Universe to yourself? You carry your fortunes in your own hand. Change of place won't mend the matter. You will weave the same web at Pernambuco as at Boston, if you have only learned how to make one texture. (Journal, Divinity Hall, Cambridge, November, 1827.)

Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate; Seemed, when at last his clarion accents broke,

As if the conscience of the country spoke. Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood, Than he to common sense and common good:

No mimic; from his breast his counsel drew,

Believed the eloquent was aye the true;

1 The only passage from the Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1834 which has been preserved in Emerson's Works. After Webster's death he wrote (1854), with unintentional injustice,

Why did all manly gifts in Webster fail?

He wrote on Nature's grandest brow, For Sale. Compare Whittier's arraignment of Webster in 'Ichabod, and his partial retractation in The Lost Occasion.' Most of the New England abolitionists, many of whom, so long as the party of slavery was in power, were quite willing to disrupt the Union rather than to submit to its pro-slavery laws, could never forgive or at all understand Webster's position in setting the Union above all else, even abolition.

Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

Compare the chapter on Beauty, in Emerson's 'Nature: This element [Beauty] I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. The ancient Greeks called the world káoμos, Beauty.' Compare also the Michael Angelo: Beauty cannot be defined. Like Truth, it is an ultimate aim of the human being.'

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; 1

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 10
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky; — He sang to my ear, they sang to my

eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore

20

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.2

The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,

30

1 Buonaparte was sensible to the music of bells. Hearing the bell of a parish church, he would pause, and his voico faltered as he said, Ah! that reminds me of the first years I spent at Brienne; I was then happy. (Journal, 1844.)

I remember when I was a boy going upon the beach and being charmed with the colors and forms of the shells. I picked up many and put them in my pocket. When I got home I could find nothing that I gathered -nothing but some dry, ugly mussel and snail shells. Thence I learned that Composition was more important than the beauty of individual forms to Effect. On the shore they lay wet and social, by the sea and under the sky. (Journal, May 16, 1834.)

One harvest from thy field

Homeward brought the oxen strong; A second crop thine acres yield, Which I gather in a song.1

1834?

1846.

3 Compare Wordsworth's Expostulation and Reply,' and 'The Tables Turned.'

Compare also a passage in Emerson's description of Thoreau, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury: — 'Men of note would come to talk with him.

"I don't know," he would say; "perhaps a minute would be enough for both of us."

"But I come to walk with you when you take your exercise."

"Ah, walking - that is my holy time." (WOODBURY's Talks with Emerson, p. 80.)

4 Compare the beautiful lines in Emerson's poem, 'The Dirge,' 1838:

Knows he who tills this lonely field

To reap its scanty corn,

What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn ?"

In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts;
I wandered up, I wandered down.
Beset by pensive hosts.

1 Compare Emerson's Historical Discourse at Concord, September 12, 1835,' and his Address at the Hundredth Anniversary of the Concord Fight,' especially a passage in the first of these addresses, describing the battle and its motives: These poor farmers who came up, that day, to defend their native soil, acted from the simplest instincts. They did not know it was a deed of fame they were doing,' etc.

The first quatrain of the poem is now inscribed on the Battle Monument at Concord.

Emerson's grandfather, William Emerson, was minister at Concord in 1775; in his pulpit he strongly advocated resistance to the British, and when the day of the fight came, he was among the embattled farmers.' The fight took place near his own house, later known as 'The old Manse,' and the home successively of Emerson and of Hawthorne. (See Bartlett's Concord, HisCoric and Literary.) Let us stand our ground,' he said to the minutemen; if we die, let us die here.'

2 Containing much of the quintessence, of poetry. (LONGFELLOW.)

Yesterday in the woods I followed the fine humblebee with rhymes and fancies fine. . . . The humble-bee and pine-warbler seem to me the proper objects of attention in these disastrous times. (Journal, 1837.)

When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shining haze
Silvers the horizon wall,
And with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
And infusing subtle heats,
Turns the sod to violets,
Thou, in sunny solitudes,
Rover of the underwoods,

The green silence dost displace
With thy mellow, breezy bass.

Hot midsummer's petted crone,
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone
Tells of countless sunny hours,
Long days, and solid banks of flowers;
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound
In Indian wildernesses found;
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.

Aught unsavory or unclean
Hath my insect never seen;
But violets and bilberry bells,
Maple-sap and daffodels,

Grass with green flag half-mast high,
Succory to match the sky,
Columbine with horn of honey,
Scented fern, and agrimony,
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue
And brier-roses, dwelt among;
All beside was unknown waste,
All was picture as he passed.

Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,