Nahant

All day the waves assailed the rock,
I heard no church-bell chime,
The sea-beat scorns the minster clock
And breaks the glass of Time.

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

Poet

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simple Poetry

To Rhea

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simple Poetry

Climacteric

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Simple Poetry

Walden

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.

Seashore

I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea
Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?
Am I not always here, thy summer home?
Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?
My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,
My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?
Was ever building like my terraces?
Was ever couch magnificent as mine?
Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn
A little hut suffices like a town.
I make your sculptured architecture vain,
Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,
And carve the coastwise mountain into caves.
Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes,
Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs
Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab
Older than all thy race.

Behold the Sea,
The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Bell

I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.

Thy voice upon the deep
The home-bound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.

To house of God and heavenly joys
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy sacred voice
Disarmed the thunder's fires.

And soon thy music, sad death-bell,
Shall lift its notes once more,
And mix my requiem with the wind
That sweeps my native shore.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Waterfall

A patch of meadow upland
Reached by a mile of road,
Soothed by the voice of waters,
With birds and flowers bestowed.

Hither I come for strength
Which well it can supply,
For Love draws might from terrene force
And potencies of sky.

The tremulous battery Earth
Responds to the touch of man;
It thrills to the antipodes,
From Boston to Japan.

The planets' child the planet knows
And to his joy replies;
To the lark's trill unfolds the rose,
Clouds flush their gayest dyes.

When Ali prayed and loved
Where Syrian waters roll,
Upward the ninth heaven thrilled and moved;
At the tread of the jubilant soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Tides

I saw the long line of the vacant shore,
    The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,
    And the brown rocks left bare on every hand,
    As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.
Then heard I, more distinctly than before,
    The ocean breathe and its great breast expand,
    And hurrying came on the defenceless land
    The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar.
All thought and feeling and desire, I said,
    Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song
    Have ebbed from me forever!    Suddenly o'er me
They swept again from their deep ocean bed,
    And in a tumult of delight, and strong
    As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Chimes

Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night
    Salute the passing hour, and in the dark
    And silent chambers of the household mark
    The movements of the myriad orbs of light!
Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight,
    I see the constellations in the arc
    Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
    I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake
    O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome
    Of the immeasurable sky; to feel
The slumbering world sink under us, and make
    Hardly an eddy,--a mere rush of foam
    On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Northman

The gale that wrecked you on the sand,
It helped my rowers to row;
The storm is my best galley hand
And drives me where I go.

Ralph Waldo Emerson