Cataloguing excerpts:

" And under pain, pleasure,—
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day."
-The Sphinx, "The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols"

"Once with manlike love and fear
I gave thee for an hour my ear,
I kept the sun and stars at bay,
And love, for words thy tongue could say.
I cannot sell my heaven again
For all that rattles in thy brain."
-"fragments on the poet and the poetic gift. ii. "

"But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings.

Teach me your mood, O patient stars!
Who climb each night the ancient sky.
Leaving on space no shade, no scars,
No trace of age, no fear to die."
-"fragments on the poet and the poetic gift. v. "

" 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."
-"the rhodora: on being asked, whence is the flower?"

" Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book."
-The Apology

" *
o She is gamesome and good,
o But of mutable mood,—
o No dreary repeater now and again,
o She will be all things to all men.
o She who is old, but nowise feeble,
o Pours her power into the people,
o Merry and manifold without bar,
o Makes and moulds them what they are,
o And what they call their city way
o Is not their way, but hers,
o And what they say they made to-day,
o They learned of the oaks and firs.
o She spawneth men as mallows fresh,
o Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh;
o She drugs her water and her wheat
o With the flavors she finds meet,
o And gives them what to drink and eat;
o And having thus their bread and growth,
o They do her bidding, nothing loath.
o What's most theirs is not their own,
o But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone,
o And in their vaunted works of Art
o The master-stroke is still her part."
-NAture Part ii.