Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE NUN'S ASPIRATION, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The yesterday doth never smile Last Line: How lame the other limped away. Subject(s): Nuns | ||||||||
The yesterday doth never smile, To-day goes drudging through the while, Yet in the name of Godhead, I The morrow front, and can defy; Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid. Ah me! it was my childhood's thought, If He should make my web a blot on life's fair picture of delight, My heart's content would find it right. But O, these waves and leaves, -- When haply stoic Nature grieves, -- No human speech so beautiful As their murmurs mine to lull. On this altar God hath built I lay my vanity and guilt; Nor me can Hope or Passion urge Hearing as now the lofty dirge Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn, Nature's funeral, high and dim, -- Sable pageantry of clouds, Mourning summer laid in shrouds. Many a day shall dawn and die, Many an angel wander by, And passing, light my sunken turf Moist perhaps by ocean surf, Forgotten amid splendid tombs, Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms. On earth I dream; -- I die to be: Time! shake not thy bald head at me. I challenge thee to hurry past, Or for my turn to fly too fast. Think me not numbed or halt with age, Or cares that earth to earth engage, Caught with love's cord of twisted beams, Or mired by climate's gross extremes. I tire of shams, I rush to Be, I pass with yonder comet free, -- Pass with the comet into space Which mocks thy aeons to embrace; AEons which tardily unfold Realm beyond realm, -- extent untold; No early morn, no evening late, -- Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate, Whose shining sons, too great for fame, Never heard thy weary name; Nor lives the tragic bard to say How drear the part I held in one, How lame the other limped away. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FAR MEMORY: 2. SOMEONE INSIDE ME REMEMBERS by LUCILLE CLIFTON FAR MEMORY: 5. SINNERMAN by LUCILLE CLIFTON CLARE OF ASSISI by MADELINE DEFREES EXISTING LIGHT; FOR LEE NYE by MADELINE DEFREES GILBERT OF SEMPRINGHAM by MADELINE DEFREES GRANDMOTHER GRANT by MADELINE DEFREES HANGING THE BLUE NUNS; FOR WARREN CARRIER by MADELINE DEFREES IN THE MIDDLE OF PRIEST LAKE by MADELINE DEFREES PSALM FOR A NEW NUN by MADELINE DEFREES |
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