Back to Index

Music

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1904

Let me go where’er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that ’s fair, from all that ’s foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.

It is not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird,
Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.

’T is not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast’s mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings.

Published in The Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tags:

Any corrections or public domain poems I should have here? Email me at poems (at) this domain.