Quotes
Quotes - Emerson
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
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,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
I like a church; I like a cowl;
I like a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles:
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowléd churchman be.
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.
Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old.
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew:
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.
Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but can not steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
Good bye, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art not my friend; I am not thine.
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
Love not the flower they pluck and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
What potent blood hath modest May!
And striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is ever wide.
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.
Oh, tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire.
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore.
