Famous Ralph Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ralph poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ralph poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ralph poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun-dew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your picture smiles as first it smiled,
The ring you gave is still the same,
Your letter tells, O changing child,
No tidings since it came.
Give me an amulet
That keeps intelligence with you,
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.
Alas, that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate is above me. Why should I browse?
Sleeping in dosses, an outcast, I rove.
Grief is a cellar,
that opens in every old house.
A ditch is below me and fate is above.
What did I want? Well, a life of contentment.
What did I get? Just a coffin and wreath...
...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
BURLY dozing humble-bee
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone 5
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer desert cheerer
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer me thy hearer
Singing over shrubs and vines. 10
Insect lover of...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.
Set not thy foot on graves;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable time
And nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.
Set not thy foot on graves;
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament;
His myrrh,...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
GIVE all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends kindred days
Estate good fame
Plans credit and the Muse¡ª 5
Nothing refuse.
'Tis a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly
Hope beyond hope: 10
High and more high
It dives into noon
With wing unspent
Untold intent;
But it is a god 15...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From the French
SOME of the hurts you have cured
And the sharpest you still have survived
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived! ...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee, from the hill-top looking down;
And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton tolling the bell at noon,
Dreams not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blind worm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife.
Or who,...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sinful painter drapes his goddess warm,
Because she still is naked, being drest;
The godlike sculptor will not so deform
Beauty, which bones and flesh enough invest....Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see 5
Would I that cowl¨¨d churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
BRING me wine but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots reaching through
Under the Andes to the Cape
Suffer'd no savour of the earth to 'scape. 5
Let its grapes the morn salute
From a nocturnal root
Which feels the acrid juice
Of Styx and Erebus;
And...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sphynx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled,
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.?
"Who'll tell me my secret
The ages have kept?
? I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;?
The fate of the manchild,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown,
Dædalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep,
Life death overtaking,
Deep underneath deep.
Erect as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow;—
This befell long ago.
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged;
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste,
With malice...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.
Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.
Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love,—
Into vision which all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel,
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves;
Where the starred eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like,
When good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.
There Past, Present,...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What care I, so they stand the same,—
Things of the heavenly mind,—
How long the power to give them fame
Tarries yet behind?
Thus far to-day your favors reach,
O fair, appeasing Presences!
Ye taught my lips a single speech,
And a thousand silences.
Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day,
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say....Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.
I saw men go up and down
In the country and the town,
With this prayer upon their neck,
"Judgment and a judge we seek."
Not...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Virtue runs before the muse
And defies her skill,
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter's will.
Star-adoring, occupied,
Virtue cannot bend her,
Just to please a poet's pride,
To parade her splendor.
The bard must be with good intent
No more his, but hers,
Throw away his pen and paint,
Kneel with worshippers.
Then, perchance, a sunny ray
From the heaven of fire,
His lost tools may over-pay,
And better...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer
While they slumbered and slept:--
"The fate of the man-child,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalion plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?
"Erect as a sunbeam,
Unspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The prosperous and beautiful
To me seem not to wear
The yoke of conscience masterful,
Which galls me everywhere.
I cannot shake off the god;
On my neck he makes his seat;
I look at my face in the glass,
My eyes his eye-balls meet.
Enchanters! enchantresses!
Your gold makes you seem wise:
The morning mist within your grounds
More proudly rolls, more softly lies.
Yet spake yon purple mountain,
Yet said...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lilacs blossom just as sweet
Now my heart is shattered.
If I bowled it down the street,
Who's to say it mattered?
If there's one that rode away
What would I be missing?
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.
Eyes that watch the morning star
Seem a little brighter;
Arms held out to darkness are
Usually whiter.
Shall I bar the strolling guest,
Bind my brow...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.
Thy voice upon the deep
The home-bound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.
To house of God and heavenly joys
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy sacred voice
Disarmed the thunder's fires.
And soon...Read more of this...
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