Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music

Music - meaning Summary

Universal Presence of Song

Emerson’s "Music" asserts that a persistent, sky-born music pervades every part of the world. The poem claims this singing emerges from both beauty and ugliness, youth and age, high and low. By repeating that even the darkest, meanest, or muddied things contain song, the poem offers an inclusive spiritual vision: harmony is an immanent, universal quality that unites disparate elements of nature and human experience.

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Let me go where'er I will I hear a skyborn 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. 'Tis not in the high stars alone, Nor in the cup of budding flowers, Nor in the red-breast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers. But in the mud and scum of things There alway, alway something sings.

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