The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men
W. H Channing was a Unitarian minister and active Abolitionist who challenged Emerson to do something to take up arms in the war against slavery. This poem was Emerson’s response and it is a fiery assault against men of power who had refused to use their privilege and influence to do the right thing. The “little men” is a metaphorical reference and collective accusation, but like is also a very direct and targeted accusation leveled against New Hampshire native Daniel Webster (who would later be made famous in a fictional courtroom victory over the Devil) whom Abolitionists felt had betrayed his own conscience with the part he played in the Compromise of 1850
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
With this opening line to a poem commemorating the completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837 constructed to honor the April 1775 skirmish between British and colonial troops, Emerson set out to compose a hymn to the first casualties of American independence. What he actually accomplished was to coin a phrase which has since become synonymous with the Revolutionary War. In addition, the phrase “shot heard round the world” has been endowed with an idiomatic elasticity allowing it to be re-appropriated to describe everything from the assassination which ignited World War I to a pennant-winning home-run in Major League Baseball.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
These lines are representative of this poem’s theme as a whole and this poem is representative of Emerson’s underlying foundation of the Transcendentalist movement as a whole. This movement—outlined and given structure by Emerson in his essays—essentially boils down to the idea that the entire world is not a collection of rigidly constructed individual parts, but an ongoing process in which all parts are organically unified and inter-dependent upon another for the process of creation.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
The Snow-Storm” has long been one of Emerson’s most anthologized poems. Its appearance in textbooks affords students a prime opportunity to study the celebration of nature as a thing of beauty which is another fundamental aspect of Transcendentalist thought. This excerpt becomes key to that element with its portrayal of those inside a farmhouse turning their back to the aesthetic quality of the snow outside as they focus their attentions on more mundane and prosaic matters.
Gravely it broods apart on joy,
And, truth to tell, amused by pain.
This is not an excerpt, but the poem in full. The epigrammatic nature of the poem would seem to insist that it is the poet’s final word on the subject of intellect. But that is not necessarily so because…
Go, speed the stars of Thought
On to their shining goals;—
The sower scatters broad his seed;
The wheat thou strew'st be souls.
Here is another poem in its entirety which shares the title “Intellect.” This examination of intellect reveals the poetic side of Emerson whereas the above poem with the same title is more reflective of the philosophical author of Transcendentalist essays.
