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Posted by Hannah on November 15, 1999 at 22:13:49:
Hi everybody. I'm new to this board and have so far noticed one major thing. No one posts information! Only questions! So I would like to post the essay I am currently working on...I have not even completed the rough draft of the essay (it's pretty patchy) and I'm not an expert by any means but I hope it will be of help to some of you.
The poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects his transcendentalist belief in the divinity of nature. In his poems, he uses vivid imagery to portray the power and beauty of the natural world.
In "The Snow Storm," a blank verse poem, Emerson paints a word picture of a fierce blizzard. The north wind is personified as a wild and brilliant architect and the snow as his stones and tiles. "Come see the north wind's masonry. / Out of an unseen quarry evermore / Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer" (lines 10-12). These lines also illustrate the poet's use of enjambment, a poetic device which he frequently employs during this poem which serves to create a whirling sense of motion which reflects the movement of the snow. The poem begins in the first stanza with a description of the effects the storm has on people. "The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet / Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit / Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed" (6-8). Humans are shown as ultimately helpless in the face of the onslaught of powerful nature. The second stanza goes on to praise the wild creativity of the north wind: "Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work / So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he / For number or proportion" (15-17). Finally, the storm's capriciousness comes to an end in the third and final stanza, and people are left to themselves to vainly endeavor to copy the fierce beauty of the north wind's forms. Emerson personifies "astonished [human] Art" (25), who is left to "mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, / Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, / The frolic architecture of the snow." (26-28)
Like "The Snow Storm," "The Rhodora" emphasizes the loveliness and perfection of nature. However, unlike it, "The Rhodora" is written with a clear pattern and rhyming scheme causing it to better reflect the quieter beauty and presence of the flower. The poem is composed of 16 verses and can be divided into two parts: in the first half of the poem, Emerson writes in the first person causing the reader to visualize the scene in the woods through his eyes; in the second half, he addresses the rhodora directly while philosophizing about nature and the nature of beauty. Both halves have exactly the same rhyming scheme. The first four verses of each half (lines 1-4 and 9-12) are two couplets. In the last four verses of each half (lines 5-8 and 13-16) the final words of alternating lines rhyme. The entire poem is written in Iambic Pentameter. The poem is composed of 16 verses which are divided by rhyming scheme into four groups of four lines, each of which expresses a different thought or image pertaining to the Rhodora. In the first four verses, which are actually two couplets, Emerson describes discovering the flower in the woods, "Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, / To please the desert and the sluggish brook," (lines 3, 4). Consonance (shown in the previous two lines) and alliteration are the only poetic devices used in "The Rhodora," and these are employed only in a few lines. In the second group of four lines, the rhyming scheme is cdcd and the first of these lines contains an example of alliteration which gives the verse a pleasing gentle rhythm, "The purple petals fallen in the pool…" (5). These four verses tell of how the petals "Made the black water with their beauty gay…" (6) and how the red-bird that comes to the pool "his plooms to cool" (7) appears gaudy in comparison with the delicate flower. The rhodora seems to Emerson to be the epitomy of simple beauty. The third grouping of four verses repeats the pattern of the first in that it is made up of two couplets. In the first half of the poem, Emerson writes in the first person causing the reader to visualize the scene in the woods through his eyes. In the second half, he addresses the rhodora directly while philosophizing about nature and the nature of beauty. In line 12 one of Emerson's primary ideas is stated pionately as he tells the rhodora how to answer those who question the purpose for her existence on earth, "Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing, / Then beauty is its own excuse for Being…". This thought reflects the belief held by the writer that beauty in and of itself is one of the transcending good powers in the universe. Even more can be gathered from these lines: By implying that the flower was not created directly for or by any one god, Emerson is implying that nature is itself divine. Returning to the rhyming scheme of lines 5-8 in the final four verses, Emerson asks a fundamental question, "Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!" (13). In the final verse, he answers the question. His response reveals his own profound, though non-traditional, faith: "I never thought to ask; I never knew; / But in my simple ignorance suppose / The self-same power that brought me there, brought you," (14-15). Though he scorned traditional Christianity, Ralph Waldo Emerson was in his own way a deeply religious man. Much can be drawn from his answer to the question concerning the flower's existence. As a transcendentalist, he believed that reality went beyond the physical world; that, in fact, the highest powers are forces that fill the universe but "transcend" the material realm. He believed not only that these forces flow through nature, but also that they flow through humankind. Therefore, there is a unity between himself and all the earth's living things, including a little flower. This unity comes from the purity, the divinity, that is innate in nature and people.
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