Post by Haley Curtis
The poet I chose was Ralph Waldo Emerson since he always fascinated me in my high school literature class. I always found it weird to learn in class about a man who thinks the way we are learning is inferior to learning through nature. He thought teachers should turn to nature more than lectures and exams. He has multiple poems expressing how he is concerned that teachers have lost touch and the students do not learn but learn how to test. One of my favorite poems by Emerson is called “ Song of Nature” where he explains how experiencing nature allows growth in his life and his accomplishments rather than just focusing on facts. He focuses on the importance of understanding nature to understand all things since he states in this poem all things come from nature. By starting off the poem with the verse “ Mine are the night and morning” he already drew me in. I was curious as to what he was talking about since the beginning of the first verse felt like a second part of a thought. I quickly wanted to know what the night and morning were to him, was it his teachers? Was it how he knew all his facts? In the first stanza he uses near rhymes allowing for it to not become boring since the poem is very long by using a mix of near rhymes and rhymes it keeps the reader focused. He toys with the idea that yes we have science but what about our imagination through viewing nature. In the second stanza he speaks of knowing he doesn’t know everything. By using words like “I hid”, “dumb” and “slumber I am Strong” by choosing this diction and saying he feels strong when he is resting or quiet it shows by knowing you know less you’ll try to learn. By using the phrase “Fount of Life” he is speaking of waters used for baptism saying he has a strong belief, is learning something new or even feeling reborn. We know he feels strongly about this since he ends this stanza with the word “deluge”. Emerson always uses very strong diction instead of flowery language to show emotion. He talks about a wreath he has been making for centuries making me think he is speaking of all the knowledge he wants to teach or to show off. He thinks people have been so focused on facts for a long time through words like “centuries” and “a thousand summers” showing this way of life of just fact based knowledge has been happening longer than he’s been alive. I love how he describes nature to describe his own being. A couple of examples are “my apples ripened well” showing his ideas or his offspring are growing and have finally fully developed. This could mean he is watching his three children thrive through viewing both nature and prior knowledge. He speaks of the stars a lot here and I cannot tell because there are multiple and broken if he is relating them to past philosophers or each star being his own ideas and if broken it was an idea proven wrong. He talks about the gods and God, referring back to the creation and how everything was made. My favorite stanza is when he talks about how the tides will forever be moving but he questions his mortality. He speaks of “resting out west” but questions it. It feels powerful since I think he knows he has to die but since he hasn’t yet witnessed it in nature yet or felt that type of pain he can not imagine it yet. Emerson does not know why he feels like he cannot witness it all with how slow life is he will miss something. He uses repetition a lot through the format of a sentence or repetition of specific words that he feels are powerful. Though he loves to question what others believe to be fact he knows that his world will end once he dies but the elements will always stay. My favorite line is coincidentally at the end and it goes “My oldest force is good as new” I think it has multiple meanings. One meaning being no matter what he likes that he questions this world and everyday he has a new question.
poem:
Song of Nature
Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.
I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.
No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;
And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.
And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.
I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.
And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;
What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.
Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Or granite, marl, and shell.
But he, the man-child glorious,—
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.
My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.
Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?
Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;
I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is summer’s pomp,
Or winter’s frozen shade?
I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.
Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.
One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.
I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o’er kings to rule;—
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.
Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.
Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.
A small part of me does agree with this school of thought that school is slightly overrated and you can learn more in nature. One of my favorite sayings is “the more you know, the less you know.” I interpreted this as him saying he is small compared to the components of nature – they are his teachers. But then he says he is tired and hasn’t truly lived a fulfilling life because he couldn’t influence others to live in the same fashion. He wants to die and go to heaven and build his relationship with God. I like this poem and how you wrote about it!
I have always loved Emerson, I completely agree that we have lost touch with nature — if he saw us now, he would probably flip. I think we can learn so much from nature and the world around us that the classroom just doesn’t teach. I know it’s strange to agree with him because I’m an Education major, but I can’t help but think he was on to something.