Thread: Hidden Gems
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Unread 04-03-2017, 10:33 AM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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For my birthday last year, my mother gave me a leather-bound volume called American Lyrics, published in 1912 by Doubleday Page, that she fished out of a flea market. I’ve just started snooping around in it and have found some lovely poems by e.g., Jones Very, William Vaughn Moody, Robert Underwood Johnson, and other poets whom I’ve read very little.

This one is not I suppose a truly ‘hidden’ gem, but it struck me with great force – particularly as, when I think of Emerson, I think of his superb essays, which I have several times re-read, but not so much of his verse, which I confess I have found labored. And we rarely mention Emerson in these parts it seems, despite his formal work. But this poem is really quite wonderful; it accords with my experience, which is to say, to me it is true. Could be that at heart I’m just a powder-puff, I own.


Give All to Love

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse,—
Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent:
But it is a god,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,—
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,—
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last edited by Michael F; 04-03-2017 at 10:55 AM. Reason: hideous pleonasm
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