The Rhodora, On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower (1834)
by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 — 1882)
“Beauty is its own excuse for Being”
The Rhodora (1834)
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
❧ — arisbe.carrd.co — ❧
Bib. & see also:
- source: Wikisource, “The Rhodora”, “Ralph Waldo Emerson”
- “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson The Major Poetry
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson The Major Prose
- Joseph Urbas, The Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- EmersonCentral.com
- University of Michigan, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Centenary Edition (digital edition)
- Harvard University Press, Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
⠀⠀⠀Is master of all I am.”
