American Transcendentalists

American Transcendentalists Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman

Ralph Waldo Emerson • 1803-1882, from Boston, MA • Essayist, Lecturer, Poet • Nicknamed “The Concord Sage” • Led the TRANSCENDENTAL movement • Was a champion of INDIVIDUALITY and spread his religious and social beliefs via his writing and lectures. • In 1836, with the publication of his essay Nature, his philosophy of transcendentalism was laid out. • Shortly after, he delivered a lecture entitled “The American Scholar,” and this was said to be “America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence.”

Emerson • The principle ideas of his philosophy included: • Individuality • Freedom • Self-Realization • A spiritual relationship between the “soul” and the “surrounding world”– immersing oneself in nature in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment. • Emphasized a “private” sense of spirituality rather than a public one– no “organized” religion.

Emerson • Emerson was just an “average” student at Harvard. • He served as “Class Poet”. • After graduating, he travelled to St. Augustine, Fl. Where he met Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Prince Achille Murat. They discussed subjects like religion, politics, society, philosophy, etc., and these discussions influenced Emerson a great deal. • In his adult life, he served as an educator and a pastor. He resigned his role as pastor due to his disagreements with the church: "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it.“ -Emerson

Emerson • Emerson travelled throughout Europe. • Upon his visit to England, he met Wordsworth, Coleridge, and another writer, Thomas Carlyle, who would become an inspiration and friend to Emerson. • He headed back to the U.S. in 1833, and on 5 November 1833, he would make the first of over 1500 lectures, which would lay the foundation for what would become his famous essay Nature.

The Transcendental Club • The day before Nature was published, Emerson met with some friends to plan meetings of “like minded intellectuals.” • The meetings began on 19 September 1836, and they were deemed “The Transcendental Club.” • Women began coming to the meetings in 1837. • Also in 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau. • The flagship journal of the Transcendental Club, called The Dial, began publication in 1840 and ended in 1844. In its time, it would promote some of the up and coming writers of the movement, including Thoreau.

Emerson: "I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom" • Emerson was staunchly anti-slavery. • He did not like to be in the public eye much, so he wasn’t as outspoken on the issue as others were; however, he did give some speeches/lectures on the issue. • He is quoted as saying, “The South calls slavery an institution... I call it destitution... Emancipation is the demand of civilization.” • He met Lincoln. • He was moved by the murder of Elijah Lovejoy (an abolitionist publisher) and said of his commitment to the cause: "It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live".

Emerson • Emerson and Thoreau were best friends, and Emerson even gave Thoreau’s eulogy when he died in 1862. • Emerson was a pallbearer at Nathanial Hawthorne’s funeral (1864). • Later in life, his memory began to fail. • He died of pneumonia 27 April 1882. He is buried at Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, MA. • He left behind extensive journals. Harvard Press published them as a large 16 volume set. • It is said that he inspired Thoreau to keep journals as well.

Emerson- Controversial Views • -Believed that all things all connected to God, and therefore, all things are divine. • -Believed that God does not “reveal” truth, but that truth can be experienced through a communion with nature. • This was controversial because his philosophy essentially removed the “central God figure” from religion. • Harold Bloom, one of the most famous American literary critics, called Emerson, “the prophet of the American Religion.”

Influences • Contemporaries like Thoreau & Whitman. • Even Melville, Hawthorne, Henry James • Existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche • Pragmatist Philosopher/Psychologist William James • Modern Poets like T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens. • Those inspired by Emerson are known as “Emersonians”.

Essay, Nature • Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses; — in its common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.

Essay, Nature • Emerson divides nature into four usages: • Commodity: • Beauty • Language • Discipline. • These distinctions define the ways by which humans use nature for their basic needs, their desire for delight, their communication with one another and their understanding of the world. • We will discuss each one.

Commodity • A commodity is an item produced to satisfy a want or need. • Nature is “in ministry to man.” • All parts of nature “work together” for the “profit of man.” • “Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed.” • “The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man.”

Beauty– “The Greeks called the world [Kosmos], beauty.” • “A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.” • He discusses the “threefold” nature of beauty. • 1. “First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight.” • 2. “The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will” • 3. An object of the intellect: “The love of beauty is Taste.” It “reforms itself in the mind… for new creation.” • “The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of Nature.”

Language • Language is a third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle, and threefold degree. • 1. Words are signs of natural facts. • 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. • 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. Discipline “Nature s a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. ”

Final Notes, Nature • Emerson doesn’t believe humans appreciate nature & respect all it gives us. • The key to doing so is SOLITUDE: “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.” • Emerson breaks his essay into eight sections-- Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects-- each of which sheds a different perspective on the relationship between humans and nature. • Humans need to develop a relationship with nature and give back, rather than just take from nature. • We must recognize nature as the “Universal Spirit”– “Universal Being.” : “The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship”.

Henry David Thoreau: 1817-1862 • Poet/Philosopher/Historian/Abolitionist/and one of the leading Transcendentalists. From Concord, MA. • Best known for Walden & his essay Civil Disobedience, which was “an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.” This influenced both Gandhi & MLK • CD presents what some consider an “anarchist” view: "That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." • Wrote on natural history & ecology & is one of the founders of modern-day environmentalism. • Wrote from observation & personal experience. • Admonished waste & encouraged living with only one’s most essential needs: “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

Walden • “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” –Thoreau, Walden

Walden • Thoreau spent two years in a cabin, built by his own hands, on Walden Pond (wooded area near Concord, MA.) • This land was owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. • He hoped to gain a better understanding of society by “immersing himself in nature” and engaging in intense personal introspection. • This was an experiment in self-sufficiency and simple living. • It took him almost 10 years to complete Walden, but when he did, the work was well-received. • Like Emerson’s Nature, it is organized in parts. We will look at just a few of them.

Economy • This is the first & longest chapter, and it outlines his project. • He explains that he easily obtains his necessities (food, shelter, clothing, fuel) with the help of his family & friends & by working. He clears some land, builds a cottage for $863, plants a garden, and attempts to live as efficiently and simply as possible. • “As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than this.” • He records all of his expenses to demonstrate the --concept of economy– “careful, thrifty management of resources.”

Solitude • Thoreau presents beneficial effects of living solitary and close to nature. • He claims to love being alone, saying, "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.“ • “Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection.” • “I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.”

Higher Laws • Thoreau discusses whether hunting wild animals and eating meat is necessary. • Thoreau praises vegetarianism, teetotalism (abstinence from drinking alcohol), chastity, and work. • “Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.” • The highest form of self-restraint is when one can subsist not on other animals, but of plants and crops cultivated from the earth. • “I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. ”

House Warming & Spring • House Warming: “IN OCTOBER I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food.(1) There, too, I admired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there. ” • It is November, and Thoreau needs to build a fireplace for warmth: “When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels.” • The next winter, he builds a stove. The section is about preparing his home to endure the coming winter. • In SPRING, Thoreau watches the ice thaw and is excited about the “rebirth” that spring will bring: “The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. ” • “At the approach of spring the red squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing,”… He goes on to describe the birds and the rain: “A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. ”

Final Notes, Walden • “Walden emphasizes the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature in transcending the "desperate" existence that, he argues, is the lot of most people. The book is not a traditional autobiography, but combines autobiography with a social critique of contemporary Western culture's consumerist and materialist attitudes and its distance from and destruction of nature. The book is not simply a criticism of society, but also an attempt to engage creatively with the better aspects of contemporary culture.”

Walt Whitman • Background information can be found on main Weebly page. • Dates: 1819-1892 • Greatest & most influential American Poet • “Old Graybeard” • He was homosexual • Naturalism • Mysticism • Transcendentalism • * Civil Rights; * Freedom; * Individuality

“O Captain! My Captain!” • O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, • The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, • The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, • While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; • But O heart! heart! / O the bleeding drops of red,/ Where on the deck my Captain lies/ Fallen cold and dead. • O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; • Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, • For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, • For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; • Here Captain! dear father! / The arm beneath your head! / It is some dream that on the deck, • You’ve fallen cold and dead. • My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, • My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, • The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, • From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; • Exult O shores, and ring O bells! / But I with mournful tread, / Walk the deck my Captain lies, / Fallen cold and dead.

“O Captain! My Captain!” - 1865 • It is an ELEGY, “mourning poem.” • Whitman admired President Lincoln as “the great redeemer.” He wanted to see an end to slavery. • The poem is an EXTENDED METAPHOR. • The “ship” is the United States; the “captain” is Lincoln, and “the prize” is the union of the states. • In the poem, the narrator laments the death of this captain who has “fallen cold and dead.” • “The ship is anchored,” and the “voyage done”– the captain was successful in keeping the “prize;” however, this victory is overshadowed by the grief of the captain’s death.

O Captain– Great Scene, Great Movie • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJsjNNp0foE

“When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom’d” • The poem is an ELEGY, written to lament the death of President Lincoln. • WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. • President Lincoln died in April, the time when the lilacs bloom. Every spring, the blooming lilacs will remind Whitman of him: “O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.” • “O powerful, western, fallen star! O shades of night! O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d! O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!”

“Lilacs…” • “The last time he noticed lilacs blooming, says the poem's speaker, he saw a great star falling in the western sky. (The falling star is the planet Venus, which symbolizes Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln "fell" from power on April 14, 1865, when he was mortally wounded. He died the following day). The speaker mourned. Now, as spring returns, he again sees the blooming lilacs and the falling star, and again he mourns the death of Lincoln. He will do so every year at this this time, he says. When the dark sky hides the star, his soul becomes a prisoner of sadness.”

“Lilacs…” • The tone of the poem is somber and heavy with grief, but its mournfulness eases somewhat after the speaker observes that death is a way out of this sometimes cruel world. He realizes that it isn’t the dead who suffer, but the loved ones that are left behind. He even welcomes death: • “Come lovely and soothing death,Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,In the day, in the night, to all, to each,Sooner or later delicate death. Prais'd be the fathomless universe,For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,And for love, sweet love -- but praise! praise! praise!For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.”

“Lilacs…” Imagery • I love the imagery of the funeral procession: • Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, 35With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing, With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, 40With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey, With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang, Here, coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac. 45 • 7 • (Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death. • All over bouquets of roses, 50O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you O death.)

“Lilacs...” – Basic Themes • Rebirth & the life/death cycle: The blooms of spring, the beginning of life, are juxtaposed with images of death, the end of Lincoln’s life. • Grief & the comforting power of nature. • The poem ends: “Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, 200And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, 205Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.”

Whitman’s “Song of Myself” • This is one of my favorite poems of all time. • The poem epitomizes the transcendental sentiment with melodic verses that speak to the core of the soul. • The poem is written in 1st person and addresses “you”– we are all invited in to Whitman’s poem. • The version in your textbook is from the 1891 “deathbed” edition of Leaves of Grass that, at the time, was shocking. • Written in 1855, Leaves of Grass broke ground for several reasons: • 1. It was written in an unconventional way– no rhymes, varied length of lines, etc. • 2. The themes were shocking, and it contained vivid sexual imagery. • 3. His verse appealed to the “common reader”– it was poetry for the masses, not just the elite. • 4. The poems celebrated the minorities, the overlooked: slaves, prostitutes, immigrants, prisoners… • 5. The verse was all-encompassing: beauty mixed with slang, spirituality mixed with obscenity, experience mixed with reflection. • ** I will include a few verses that are not included in your book for our discussion.

“Song of Myself” • 1I celebrate myself;And what I assume you shall assume;For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.I loafe and invite my Soul;I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes;I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

“Song of Myself” • 2The smoke of my own breath;Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs;The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind;A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left;)You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.

“Song of Myself” • 5I believe in you, my Soul—the other I am must not abase itself to you;And you must not be abased to the other.Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat;Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the best;Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning;How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me,And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth;And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own;And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers;And that a kelson of the creation is love;And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields;And brown ants in the little wells beneath them;And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap’d stones, elder, mullen and poke-weed.

“Song of Myself” • A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, Whose?Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,Growing among black folks as among white;Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;It may be you are from old people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps;And here you are the mothers’ laps.This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers;Darker than the colorless beards of old men;Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.What do you think has become of the young and old men?And what do you think has become of the women and children?They are alive and well somewhere;The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses;And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

“Song of Myself” • 44It is time to explain myself—Let us stand up.What is known I strip away;I launch all men and women forward with me into THE UNKNOWN.The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers;There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.Births have brought us richness and variety,And other births will bring us richness and variety.I do not call one greater and one smaller;That which fills its period and place is equal to any.Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?I am sorry for you—they are not murderous or jealous upon me;All has been gentle with me—I keep no account with lamentation;(What have I to do with lamentation?)I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be.My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs;On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps;All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

“Song of Myself” • 46I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured, and never will be measured.I tramp a perpetual journey—(come listen all!)My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods;No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair;I have no chair, no church, no philosophy;I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, or exchange;But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,My left hand hooking you round the waist,My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.Not I—not any one else, can travel that road for you,You must travel it for yourself.It is not far—it is within reach;Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know;Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.Shoulder your duds, dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

“Song of Myself” • 51The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.Listener up there! Here, you! What have you to confide to me?Look in my face, while I snuff the sidle of evening;Talk honestly—no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.Do I contradict myself?Very well, then, I contradict myself;(I am large—I contain multitudes.)I concentrate toward them that are nigh—I wait on the door-slab.Who has done his day’s work? Who will soonest be through with his supper?Who wishes to walk with me?Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?

“Song of Myself” • 52The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he complains of my gab and my loitering.I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.The last scud of day holds back for me;It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow’d wilds;It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the runaway sun;I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love;If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean;But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,And filter and fibre your blood.Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;Missing me one place, search another;I stop somewhere, waiting for you.

American Transcendentalists