The Nun's Aspiration
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 to 1882
Track 1
Reconstruct the poem by dragging each line into its correct position. Your goal is to reassemble the original poem as accurately as possible. As you move the lines, you'll see whether your arrangement is correct, helping you explore the poem's flow and meaning. You can also print out the jumbled poem to cut up and reassemble in the classroom. Either way, take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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Aeons which tardily unfold
Nor lives the tragic bard to say
On earth I dream;-I die to be:
Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
Forgotten amid splendid tombs,
Many a day shall dawn and die,
If He should make my web a blot
Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,
Nature's funeral high and dim,-
As their murmurs mine to lull.
Or for my turn to fly too fast.
Many an angel wander by,
Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,
Nor me can Hope or Passion urge
I tire of shams, I rush to be:
On life's fair picture of delight,
Caught with love's cord of twisted beams,
The morrow front, and can defy;
I challenge thee to hurry past
Or cares that earth to earth engage,
The yesterday doth never smile,
Which mocks thy aeons to embrace;
Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms.
Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,
But O, these waves and leaves,-
And passing, light my sunken turf
No early morn, no evening late,-
Moist perhaps by ocean surf,
The day goes drudging through the while,
How lame the other limped away.
Yet, in the name of Godhead, I
I pass with yonder comet free,-
Pass with the comet into space
My heart's content would find it right.
Hearing as now the lofty dirge
Sable pageantry of clouds,
I lay my vanity and guilt;
On this altar God hath built
No human speech so beautiful
Think me not numbed or halt with age,
Or mired by climate's gross extremes.
How drear the part I held in one,
Time, shake not thy bald head at me.
Whose shining sons, too great for fame,
Realm beyond realm,-extent untold;
Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
When happy stoic Nature grieves,
Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate,
Never heard thy weary name;