GIVE ALL TO LOVE
by: Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
- IVE all
to love;
- Obey thy heart;
- Friends, kindred, days,
- Estate, good fame,
- Plans, credit, and the Muse--
- Nothing refuse.
-
- 'Tis a brave master;
- Let it have scope:
- Follow it utterly,
- Hope beyond hope:
- High and more high
- It dives into noon,
- With wing unspent,
- Untold intent;
- But it is a god,
- Knows its own path,
- And the outlets of the sky.
-
- It was never for the mean;
- It requireth courage stout,
- Souls above doubt,
- Valour unbending:
- Such 'twill reward;--
- They shall return
- More than they were,
- And ever ascending.
-
- Leave all for love;
- Yet, hear me, yet,
- One word more thy heart behoved,
- One pulse more of firm endeavour--
- Keep thee to-day,
- To-morrow, for ever,
- Free as an Arab
- Of thy beloved.
-
- Cling with life to the maid;
- But when the surprise,
- First vague shadow of surmise,
- Flits across her bosom young,
- Of a joy apart from thee,
- Free be she, fancy-free;
- Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,
- Nor the palest rose she flung
- From her summer diadem.
-
- Though thou loved her as thyself,
- As a self of purer clay;
- Though her parting dims the day,
- Stealing grace from all alive;
- Heartily know,
- When half-gods go
- The gods arrive.
"Give All to Love" is
reprinted from Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ralph
Waldo Emerson. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1899. |
MORE POEMS BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON |
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