A Dull Uncertain Brain,

A dull uncertain brain,
But gifted yet to know
That God has cherubim who go
Singing an immortal strain,
Immortal here below.
I know the mighty bards,
I listen when they sing,
And now I know
The secret store
Which these explore
When they with torch of genius pierce
The tenfold clouds that cover
The riches of the universe
From God's adoring lover.
And if to me it is not given
To fetch one ingot thence
Of the unfading gold of Heaven
His merchants may dispense,
Yet well I know the royal mine,
And know the sparkle of its ore,
Know Heaven's truth from lies that shine--
Explored they teach us to explore.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. His most famous work includes the essays 'Self-Reliance' and 'Nature.' He was a mentor and friend to Henry David Thoreau.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Song Of Seyd Nimetollah Of Kuhistan

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simple Poetry

Earth-Song

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simple Poetry

Thine Eyes Still Shined

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simple Poetry

Greek: Adakryn Nemontai Aiona

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Fragments On Nature And Life - Life

A train of gay and clouded days
Dappled with joy and grief and praise,
Beauty to fire us, saints to save,
Escort us to a little grave.



No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low,
For God hath writ all dooms magnificent,
So guilt not traverses his tender will.



Around the man who seeks a noble end,
Not angels but divinities attend.



From high to higher forces
The scale of power uprears,
The heroes on their horses,
The gods upon their spheres.



This shining moment is an edifice
Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild.



Roomy Eternity
Casts her schemes rarely,
And an aeon allows
For each quality and part
Of the multitudinous
And many-chambered heart.

...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Destiny

That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous;
You must add the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
There's a melody born of melody,
Which melts the world into a sea.
Toil could never compass it;
Art its height could never hit;
It came never out of wit;
But a music music-born
Well may Jove and Juno scorn.
Thy beauty, if it lack the fire
Which drives me mad with sweet desire,
What boots it? What the soldier's mail,
Unless he conquer and prevail?
What all the goods thy pride which lift,
If thou pine for another's gift?
Alas! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight:
When thou lookest on his face,
Thy heart saith, 'Brother, go thy ways!
None shall ask thee what thou doest,
Or care a rush ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Mystery.

My mind is like a troubled sea
O'er which the winds forever sweep;
Within its depths, eternally,
My being's pulses throb and leap;
There germs of contemplation sleep,
Like stars beyond the Milky Way, -
Like pearls within the gloomy deep,
That never saw the light of day.

Oh, wondrous mind, how little known!
Whence comes the thought that through my brain
Floats weirdlike as the pleasing tone
That quickens a belovèd strain?
It may have graced some sweet refrain
A thousand years ago, or more;
Some Norman Prince, some valiant Dane,
May have imbibed it with their lore.

It may have strengthened Plato's soul,
Its clarion echoes ringing through
His brain, the heaven-reaching goal
Whence wisdom had its starry view;
It may have cheered the...

Charles Sangster

Blight

Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
By sweet affinities to human flesh,
Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,--
O, that were much, and I could be a part
Of the round day, related to the sun
And planted world, and full executor
Of their imperfect functions.
But these young scholars, who invade our hills,
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Merlin I

Thy trivial harp will never please
Or fill my craving ear;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
Free, peremptory, clear.
No jingling serenader's art,
Nor tinkle of piano strings,
Can make the wild blood start
In its mystic springs.
The kingly bard
Must smite the chords rudely and hard,
As with hammer or with mace;
That they may render back
Artful thunder, which conveys
Secrets of the solar track,
Sparks of the supersolar blaze.
Merlin's blows are strokes of fate,
Chiming with the forest tone,
When boughs buffet boughs in the wood;
Chiming with the gasp and moan
Of the ice-imprisoned flood;
With the pulse of manly hearts;
With the voice of orators;
With the din of city arts;
With the cannonade of wars;
With the mar...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Woodnotes II

As sunbeams stream through liberal space
And nothing jostle or displace,
So waved the pine-tree through my thought
And fanned the dreams it never brought.

'Whether is better, the gift or the donor?
Come to me,'
Quoth the pine-tree,
'I am the giver of honor.
My garden is the cloven rock,
And my manure the snow;
And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,
In summer's scorching glow.
He is great who can live by me:
The rough and bearded forester
Is better than the lord;
God fills the script and canister,
Sin piles the loaded board.
The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant the lord that shall be;
The lord is hay, the peasant grass,
One dry, and one the living tree.
Who liveth by the ragged pine
Founde...

Ralph Waldo Emerson