Nature
Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold,And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old:But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
Words in this poem
- boon n.
- A prayer or petition. [OE. bone, boin, a petition, fr. Icel. b; akin to Sw. & Dan. b, AS. b, and perh. to E. ban; but influenced by F. bon good, fr. L. bonus. Ban, Bounty.]
- haply adv.
- By hap, chance, luck, or accident; perhaps; it may be.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Nature is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Household Edition, Project Gutenberg ebook #12843; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/nature.html, id L07515.
Form and metre
Nature is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 14.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABB beholdA · oldA · whyB · dieB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold, | 14 | ·/˘·········˘/ |
| And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old: | 14 | ·············· |
| But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why, | 14 | ·····/˘··/˘··· |
| Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die. | 14 | ·/˘··/˘/······ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.