Hello Friends,
For Earth Day, we are going to visit Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1834 — with thanks to my high school English teacher, Mrs. Hackett, for introducing me to this poem. “Beauty is its own excuse for Being” has stuck with me all these years later.
Is there a line from a poem that’s stuck with you since high school or earlier? Or do you have a favorite Earth Day poem?
Enjoy.
Ællen
For Earth Day, we are going to visit Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1834 — with thanks to my high school English teacher, Mrs. Hackett, for introducing me to this poem. “Beauty is its own excuse for Being” has stuck with me all these years later.
Is there a line from a poem that’s stuck with you since high school or earlier? Or do you have a favorite Earth Day poem?
Enjoy.
Ællen
The Rhodora
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
■
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
■