Of Emerson, Whitman, and Oliver

From different eras and places, let these poetic voices and their connectedness say what they will to you:

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson

(from Each and All)

Then I said, 'I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth.'

As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,

Running over the club-moss burrs.

I inhaled the violets breath;

Around me stood the oaks and first;

Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;

Over me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and deity.

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;

Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.


2. Walt Whitman
(from To See God)

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty four,
and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God
and in my own face in the glass,

I see letters from God dropped in the street,
and every one is signed by God's name.


3. Mary Oliver
(from Not This, Not That)

Not this, not that, nor anything...
will alter

my love for you, my friends and my [B]eloved,
or for you, ghosts of Emerson and Whitman,

or for you, oh blue sky of a summer morning,
that makes me roll in a barrel of gratitude
down hills,

or for you, oldest of friends: hope;
or for you, newest of friends: faith;

or for you, ...dearest of surprises: my own life.


4. Mary Oliver
(from Mornings at Blackwater)

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond...
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live your life.