The Project Gutenberg eBook, May-Day, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Title: May-Day
and Other Pieces

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Release Date: May 31, 2005 [eBook #15963]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAY-DAY***

This eBook was prepared from the 1867 George Routledge and Sons edition by
Les Bowler.

MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

CONTENTS.

MAY-DAY.

THE ADIRONDACS.

OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.

BRAHMA

NEMESIS

FATE

FREEDOM

ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857

BOSTON HYMN

VOLUNTARIES

LOVE AND THOUGHT

LOVER'S PETITION

UNA

LETTERS

RUBIES

MERLIN'S SONG

THE TEST

SOLUTION

NATURE AND LIFE.

NATURE

THE ROMANY GIRL

DAYS

THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT

MY GARDEN

THE TITMOUSE

SEA-SHORE

SONG OF NATURE

TWO RIVERS

WALDEINSAMKEIT

TERMINUS

THE PAST

THE LAST FAREWELL

IN MEMORIAM

ELEMENTS.

EXPERIENCE

COMPENSATION

POLITICS

HEROISM

CHARACTER

CULTURE

FRIENDSHIP

BEAUTY

MANNERS

ART

SPIRITUAL LAWS

UNITY

WORSHIP

QUATRAINS.

TRANSLATIONS.

MAY-DAY.

Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,
And troops of boys
Shouting with whoop and hilloa,
And hip, hip three times three.
The air is full of whistlings bland;
What was that I heard
Out of the hazy land?
Harp of the wind, or song of bird,
Or clapping of shepherd's hands,
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply 't was the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even unto May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,