Volume II – Essays I, First Series (1841)
History Self-Reliance Compensation Spiritual Laws Love Friendship Prudence Heroism The Over-Soul Circles Intellect Art
History Self-Reliance Compensation Spiritual Laws Love Friendship Prudence Heroism The Over-Soul Circles Intellect Art
Give to barrows, trays, and pans Grace and glimmer of romance; Bring the moonlight into noon Hid in gleaming piles of stone; On the city’s paved street Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet; Let spouting fountains cool the air, Singing in the sun-baked square; Let statue, picture, park, and hall, Ballad, flag, and festival, The…
Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals; — The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew’st be souls. ESSAY XI Intellect Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Water dissolves wood, and iron, and…
Nature centres into balls, And her proud ephemerals, Fast to surface and outside, Scan the profile of the sphere; Knew they what that signified, A new genesis were here. ESSAY X Â Circles The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without…
"But souls that of his own good life partake, He loves as his own self; dear as his eye They are to Him: He’ll never them forsake: When they shall die, then God himself shall die: They live, they live in blest eternity." Henry More Space is ample, east and west, But two cannot go…
“Paradise is under the shadow of swords.” Mahomet Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; Thunderclouds are Jove’s festoons, Drooping oft in wreaths of dread Lightning-knotted round his head; The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great…
Theme no poet gladly sung, Fair to old and foul to young, Scorn not thou the love of parts, And the articles of arts. Grandeur of the perfect sphere Thanks the atoms that cohere. ESSAY VII Prudence What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have little,and that of the negative sort? My…
A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled, And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again, — O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is…
“I was as a gem concealed; Me my burning ray revealed.” Koran ESSAY V Love Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments; each often. Nature, uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in the first sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which shall lose all particular regards in its general light. The introduction to this felicity is…
The living Heaven thy prayers respect, House at once and architect, Quarrying man’s rejected hours, Builds therewith eternal towers; Sole and self-commanded works, Fears not undermining days, Grows by decays, And, by the famous might that lurks In reaction and recoil, Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil; Forging, through swart arms of Offence,…