FIELD
MUSIC
THE WALK
COSMOS
THE MIRACLE
THE WATERFALL
WALDEN
THE ENCHANTER
WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF GOETHE
RICHES
PHILOSOPHER
INTELLECT
LIMITS
INSCRIPTION FOR A WELL IN MEMORY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE WAR
THE EXILE

POEMS OF YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD

THE BELL
THOUGHT
PRAYER
TO-DAY
FAME
THE SUMMONS
THE RIVER
GOOD HOPE
LINES TO ELLEN
SECURITY
A MOUNTAIN GRAVE
A LETTER
HYMN
SELF-RELIANCE
WRITTEN IN NAPLES
WRITTEN AT ROME
WEBSTER

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

INDEX OF TITLES

* * * * *

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The Emersons first appeared in the north of England, but Thomas, who
landed in Massachusetts in 1638, came from Hertfordshire. He built soon
after a house, sometimes railed the Saint's Rest, which still stands in
Ipswich on the slope of Heart-break Hill, close by Labour-in-vain Creek.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the sixth in descent from him. He was born in
Boston, in Summer Street, May 25, 1803. He was the third son of William
Emerson, the minister of the First Church in Boston, whose father,
William Emerson, had been the patriotic minister of Concord at the
outbreak of the Revolution, and died a chaplain in the army. Ruth
Haskins, the mother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was left a widow in 1811,
with a family of five little boys. The taste of these boys was
scholarly, and four of them went through the Latin School to Harvard
College, and graduated there. Their mother was a person of great
sweetness, dignity, and piety, bringing up her sons wisely and well in
very straitened circumstances, and loved by them. Her husband's
stepfather, Rev. Dr. Ripley of Concord, helped her, and constantly
invited the boys to the Old Manse, so that the woods and fields along
the Concord River were first a playground and then the background of the
dreams of their awakening imaginations.

Born in the city, Emerson's young mind first found delight in poems and
classic prose, to which his instincts led him as naturally as another
boy's would to go fishing, but his vacations in the country supplemented
these by giving him great and increasing love of nature. In his early
poems classic imagery is woven into pictures of New England woodlands.
Even as a little boy he had the habit of attempting flights of verse,
stimulated by Milton, Pope, or Scott, and he and his mates took pleasure
in declaiming to each other in barns and attics. He was so full of
thoughts and fancies that he sought the