One of my favourite poems – maybe my absolute favourite one – is Give All To Love by Emerson. As with Thoreau, I first discovered my love for him as a young adult in university English class. Actually, I not only discovered Thoreau and Emerson, but I discovered transcendentalism and with that a kind of “home” that I have danced in and out of over the years. In reality, I didn’t discover transcendentalism so much as it found me and pulled me towards it.

According to vocabulary.com, transcendentalism is “a philosophy started in the early 19th century that promotes intuitive, spiritual thinking instead of scientific thinking based on material things.

There are three main principals – individualism, idealism, and the divinity of nature. I think one of the main components that drew me to these transcendental writers was their belief that nature is sacred and is a powerful source of both spiritual and moral wisdom that we as humans are to connect and live in harmony with.

Their writings make me feel happy and connected to the Divine in any case.

I have to say, the one visit I made to Concord years ago has left me wanting to go back and spend much more time there exploring and sitting in the space where thinkers I have admired for years spent their time. I loved New England.

There’s a big part of me that wants to love poetry, there’s another part of me that often gets bored really quickly with a poem and I often struggle with wanting to enjoy what I’m reading and wanting to poke my eyes out so I don’t have to read anymore (a bit drastic, closing the book is probably more accurate.) When I find a poem that grabs me, it becomes part of my soul and I carry it with me. As I do with this one.

From the first time I read it, the last stanza has been imprinted on me. I’ve thought about it on and off throughout the years, and it helps hold me steady. I love it.

Give All to Love

 

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Obey thy heart; 

Friends, kindred, days, 

Estate, good-fame, 

Plans, credit and the Muse,— 

Nothing refuse. 

’T is 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, 

Valor unbending, 

It will 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 endeavor,— 

Keep thee to-day, 

To-morrow, forever, 

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.