Emerson: Poems

Known in his time primarily as an essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) has since become more celebrated as a poet. One of the leading literary figures in nineteenth-century America, Emerson was for a while a pastor in the Unitarian Church before becoming a full-time writer and lecturer, settling in Concord where he was a friend of Thoreau, Hawthorne and Alcott (father of Louisa May). Together they were known as the Transcendentalists because of their high moral tone and philosophical preoccupations. Emerson himself has been described as the mystic of common sense. Emerson published his first volume of verse in 1846. With an intellectual breadth rare in any age, his poems combine intensity of spiritual feeling with close observation of the New England landscape. Among the most famous are ‘The Problem’, ‘The Snowstorm’, ‘The Rhodora’, the ‘Concord Hymn’, ‘Brahma’ and ‘Days’. This volume includes work from the collections published in Emerson’s lifetime and from the many unpublished poems and translations he left at his death.