Limits

By Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who knows this or that?

Hark in the wall to the rat:

Since the world was, he has gnawed;

Of his wisdom, of his fraud

What dost thou know?

In the wretched little beast

Is life and heart,

Child and parent,

Not without relation

To fruitful field and sun and moon.

What art thou? His wicked eye

Is cruel to thy cruelty.

Source: Poets of the English Language (Viking Press, 1950)

Biography

No one has a better claim than Ralph Waldo Emerson to being the central figure in the whole history of American literature. All artists distill influences from the past to become, themselves, influences on the future, but in Emerson's case the affiliations reach farther back and farther forward and more generally and consequentially in both directions. He inherits, for example, the inwardness of his Puritan ancestors—their . . .

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