Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ILLUSIONS, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ILLUSIONS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Flow, flow the waves hated
Last Line: And to endurance.
Variant Title(s): Motto To 'illusions'
Subject(s): Science; Scientists


Flow, flow the waves hated,
Accursed, adored,
The waves of mutation:
No anchorage is.
Sleep is not, death is not;
Who seem to die live.
House you were born in,
Friends of your spring-time,
Old man and young maid,
Day's toil and its guerdon,
They are all vanishing,
Fleeing to fables,
Cannot be moored.
See the stars through them,
Through treacherous marbles.
Know, the stars yonder,
The stars everlasting,
Are fugitive also,
And emulate, vaulted,
The lambent heat-lightning,
And fire-fly's flight.

When thou dost return,
On the wave's circulation,
Beholding the shimmer,
The wild dissipation,
And, out of endeavor
To change and to flow,
The gas become solid,
And phantoms and nothings
Return to the things,
And endless imbroglio
Is law and the world, --
Then first shalt thou know,
That in the wild turmoil,
Horsed on the Proteus,
Thou ridest to power,
And to endurance.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net