This eBook was prepared from the 1867 George Routledge and Sons edition by Les Bowler. MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. CONTENTS. MAY-DAY. THE ADIRONDACS. OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. BRAHMA NEMESIS FATE FREEDOM ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857 BOSTON HYMN VOLUNTARIES LOVE AND THOUGHT LOVER'S PETITION UNA LETTERS RUBIES MERLIN'S SONG THE TEST SOLUTION NATURE AND LIFE. NATURE THE ROMANY GIRL DAYS THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT MY GARDEN THE TITMOUSE SEA-SHORE SONG OF NATURE TWO RIVERS WALDEINSAMKEIT TERMINUS THE PAST THE LAST FAREWELL IN MEMORIAM ELEMENTS. EXPERIENCE COMPENSATION POLITICS HEROISM CHARACTER CULTURE FRIENDSHIP BEAUTY MANNERS ART SPIRITUAL LAWS UNITY WORSHIP QUATRAINS. TRANSLATIONS. MAY-DAY. Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Maketh all things softly smile, Painteth pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes. Girls are peeling the sweet willow, Poplar white, and Gilead-tree, And troops of boys Shouting with whoop and hilloa, And hip, hip three times three. The air is full of whistlings bland; What was that I heard Out of the hazy land? Harp of the wind, or song of bird, Or clapping of shepherd's hands, Or vagrant booming of the air, Voice of a meteor lost in day? Such tidings of the starry sphere Can this elastic air convey. Or haply 't was the cannonade Of the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break, Afflicted moan, and latest hold Even unto May the iceberg cold. Was it a squirrel's pettish bark, Or clarionet of jay? or hark, Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads, Steering north with raucous cry Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feed the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men unknown. Come the tumult whence it will, Voice of sport, or rush of wings, It is a sound, it is a token That the marble sleep is broken, And a change has passed on things. Beneath the calm, within the light, A hid unruly appetite Of swifter life, a surer hope, Strains every sense to larger scope, Impatient to anticipate The halting steps of aged Fate. Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl: When Nature falters, fain would zeal Grasp the felloes of her wheel, And grasping give the orbs another whirl. Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball! And sun this frozen side, Bring hither back the robin's call, Bring back the tulip's pride.