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Lectures and biographical sketches

Chapter 39: MARY MOODY EMERSON.
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
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About This Book

A compact volume of lectures and sketches that interweaves philosophical essays with concise portraits of notable contemporaries. Topics range from dreams, character, and education to ethics, literary life, and historical reflection, presented in a dense, aphoristic prose that mixes moral inquiry with cultural observation. Several pieces consider the disposition and duties of intellectual life, while the biographical sketches illuminate individual temperaments and habits of mind, together offering a mosaic of ideas about personal integrity, artistic vocation, and the social forces that shape thought and character.

MARY MOODY EMERSON.

THE yesterday doth never smile,
To-day goes drudging through the while,
Yet in the name of Godhead, I
The morrow front and can defy;
Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,
Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
Ah me! it was my childhood’s thought,
If He should make my web a blot
On life’s fair picture of delight,
My heart’s content would find it right.
But O, these waves and leaves,—
When happy, stoic Nature grieves,—
No human speech so beautiful
As their murmurs mine to lull.
On this altar God hath built
I lay my vanity and guilt;
Nor me can Hope or Passion urge,
Hearing as now the lofty dirge
Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,
Nature’s funeral high and dim,—
Sable pageantry of clouds,
Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
Many a day shall dawn and die,
Many an angel wander by,
And passing, light my sunken turf,
Moist perhaps by ocean surf,
Forgotten amid splendid tombs,
Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms.
On earth I dream;—I die to be:
Time! shake not thy bald head at me.
I challenge thee to hurry past,
Or for my turn to fly too fast.

[LUCY PERCY, Countess of Carlisle, the friend of Strafford and of Pym, is thus described by Sir Toby Matthews:]

“She is of too high a mind and dignity not only to seek, but almost to wish, the friendship of any creature. They whom she is pleased to choose are such as are of the most eminent condition both for power and employment,—not with any design towards her own particular, either of advantage or curiosity, but her nature values fortunate persons. She prefers the conversation of men to that of women; not but she can talk on the fashions with her female friends, but she is too soon sensible that she can set them as she wills; that pre-eminence shortens all equality. She converses with those who are most distinguished for their conversational powers. Of Love freely will she discourse, listen to all its faults and mark its power: and will take a deep interest for persons of celebrity.”