The Rhodora
On being asked, Whence is the flower?
The Rhodora - context Summary
Published in 1834
Published in Emerson’s 1834 Poems, "The Rhodora" answers the question of a flower’s purpose by asserting that beauty needs no external justification. Set in a quiet spring wood, the speaker discovers the rhodora and refuses intellectual explanations, offering instead a simple, transcendent view that the same Power that placed both poet and flower there accounts for its being. The poem aligns with Emersonian nature spirituality.
Read Complete AnalysesIn May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
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