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BOSTON HYMN (p. 153). Though Emerson would not sing to order, he was able to lift his voice powerfully in the cause of Freedom when his own spirit moved him.

VOLUNTARIES (p. 155). Here again Emerson takes up the cause of the slave, but this time in a tone of mourning. The sorrows of the slave, and the sorrows of those who were suffering in the war for Freedom's sake, are equally his theme.

p. 158, 7. 15. The four lines beginning here with "Peril around" were added at the latest revision in 1876.

1. 27.

In the earlier version, after the present final line, “Victor ver death and pain," came this passage:

Forever but his erring foe,
Self-assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying low,
And sees aloft the red right arm
Redress the eternal scales.

He, the poor foe, whom angels foil,
Blind with pride, and fooled by hate,
Writhes within the dragon coil,

Reserved to a speechless fate.

LOVE AND THOUGHT (p. 159). The lines are an expression of the enetrating perceptive powers of Love and Poetry.

LOVER'S PETITION (p. 159). Emerson did not include this rather ivial piece in his last collection.

UNA (p. 160). Una represents the elusive spirit of poetry that tices the thoughts far and wide over the world. The poetic inspiraon, like poetic reputation, is oftener found abroad than at home. eme is rather similar to Keats's:

Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

The

MERLIN'S SONG (p. 162). The magic song may be taken to signify e message of poetry; for poetry, as it appeals to the sense of beauty, we, and reverence lying more or less deeply hidden in all men, is the e power that maintains an unfaltering, universal dominion.

THE TEST (p. 162). This riddle, and its answer in the "Solution" 1. 163), can hardly claim any strong poetic interest; and Emerson nitted both therefore from his selected poems of 1876.

DAYS (p. 169). This singularly fine fragment of verse sums up veral thoughts that lie scattered through the prose. "Works and pays" (vol. iii.) may be generally compared. The chief ideas seem

be that the gods are with us unawares, and that the days give us hatever we have power enough to demand. Emerson wrote little to cel this in nobility of tone and rhythm.

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MY GARDEN (p. 170). Emerson's "garden tract of wild woodland on the banks of Walden Pond.

THE TITMOUSE (p. 172). This poem gives us a very pretty piece of tender and humorous bird-portraiture. Emerson's quaintly resolute little friend reminds one somewhat of Mr Kipling's Rikki-tikki, and in spirit the two are not unakin. The message of the bird practically amounts to this, that Providence is on the side of the cheerful.

SEA-SHORE (6. 175). Emerson's rendering of the sea's voice is a descant on the themes proposed earlier by another poet, Keats. Thus he writes in one of his sonnets:

It keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten-thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

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Oh ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea.

and thus in an earlier piece:

The ocean with its vastness, its blue green,
Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,
Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears,
Must think on what will be and what has been.

This is a tribute

SONG OF NATURE (p. 176). to Nature's all-inclusive magnificence, and a welcome to the perfect man of the future. Stanza 5 on p. 178 is not clear, and I am inclined to doubt whether any exact significance were ever intended.

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"Aspiring to be man, the worm

Mounts through all the spires of form."

Thus Emerson in "May-Day." In the present piece he prophesies the mounting upward of man himself to the overman.

There are a few verbal differences in the texts, but none that need record.

WALDEINSAMKEIT (p. 180). It is very probable that Emerson gave his piece this German title (meaning "Forest-loneliness") with the idea of making a little play on the word "Walden"; for the woods around Walden Pond had always been a favourite spot with him for walking and meditating. Another version gives as the last line of Stanza 1, "A Delphic shrine to me.

TERMINUS (p. 181). Emerson was sixty-four when the volume containing these lines was published; but, though the best of his work was done, his literary energies were far from exhausted.

THE PAST (p. 183). This piece is a statement of the idea familiarized to us by FitzGerald:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

THE LAST FAREWELL (p. 183). Emerson's favourite brother dward, two years younger than himself, was a handsome and brilliant ung man of somewhat feeble constitution. His voyage to Porto ico was taken for health's sake; but he died there in 1834 at the age 29.

IN MEMORIAM (p. 185). The "battle-field" of line I is, of course, e ground about Concord that saw the beginning of the War of dependence, and that holds the bodies of those who first fell.

p. 187, l. 20. The five lines beginning here were used by Emerson the second motto to "Character" (Essays).

EXPERIENCE (p. 191). Motto to "Experience" (Essays).

COMPENSATION (þ. 191).

Motto to "Compensation" (Essays).

POLITICS (p. 192). Motto to "Politics" (Essays).

HEROISM (p. 193).

Motto to "Heroism" (Essays).

CHARACTER (p. 193). The essay "Character" (vol. i.) has two ttos: this is the first; the second is taken from the "In Memoriam " s (p. 187).

CULTURE (p. 194). Motto to "Culture" (Conduct of Life).
RIENDSHIP (p. 194). Motto to "Friendship" (Essays).
EAUTY (p. 195). Motto to "Beauty" (Conduct of Life).
LANNERS (p. 195). Motto to "Behaviour " (Conduct of Life).
RT (p. 196). Motto to "Art" (Essays).

PIRITUAL LAWS (p. 197). Motto to "Spiritual Laws" (Essays).
INITY (p. 197). Motto to "The Over-Soul'
to: first is quoted from Henry More.

VORSHIP (p. 198).

(Essays)-second

Motto to "Worship" (Conduct of Life).
Motto to "Nature" (Essays).

NATURE (p. 198).

LLUSIONS (p. 199).

Motto to "Illusions" (Conduct of Life).

RUDENCE (p. 200).

Motto to "Prudence" (Essays).

IRCLES (p. 200).

Motto to "Circles" (Essays).

IOPE (p. 200). Motto to "New England Reformers" (Essays).

THE FUTURE (p. 201). Motto to "Nominalist and Realist' (Essays).

THE ABSORBING SOUL (p. 201). Motto to "History" (Essays).

INTELLECT (p. 201). Motto to "Intellect" (Essays).

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FATE (p. 202). Motto to "Fate" (Conduct of Life).

THE COUNSEL of Merlin (p. 203). Motto to "Considerations by the Way" (Conduct of Life).

QUATRAIN TO S. H. (p. 207). To Samuel Hoar; see vol. iv. for a short sketch of Hoar's character.

POWER (p. 210). This is the motto to "Self-Reliance" (Essays).

CASELLA (p. 212). Casella was a singer, and a friend of Dante, who was encountered by the poet in Purgatory. He sang a canzone Dante's so sweetly, that the souls neglected their tasks to listen (Purg Canto II.). Thus Milton in his Sonnet to Henry Lawes :

Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher

Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,

Met in the milder shades of Purgatory..

p. 213. The Greek title of the final Quatrain may be thus rendered "Not in tears, but in joy do they possess life."

WEALTH (p. 227).

GRACE (p. 256).

Motto to "Wealth" (Conduct of Life).

This piece and "The Three Dimensions appeared in the "Dial," but were not included in the Poems of 1847.

FRAGMENTS (p. 257). These are quoted in W. H. Channing's book "Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist."

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