Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PETER'S FIELD, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PETER'S FIELD, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Knows he who tills this lonely field
Last Line: As a man unto his friend.
Subject(s): Fields; Pastures; Meadows; Leas


Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight & at morn

That field by spirits bad & good
By Hell & Heaven is haunted
And every rood in the hemlock wood
I know is ground enchanted

In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts
I wandered up I wandered down
Beset by pensive hosts

For in those lonely grounds the sun
Shines not as on the town
In nearer arcs his journeys run
And nearer stoops the moon

There in a moment I have seen
The buried Past arise
The fields of Thessaly grew green
Old gods forsook the skies

I cannot publish in my rhyme
What pranks the greenwood played
It was the Carnival of time
And Ages went or stayed

To me that spectral nook appeared
The mustering Day of doom
And round me swarmed in shadowy troop
Things past & things to come

The darkness haunteth me elsewhere
There I am full of light
In every whispering leaf I hear
More sense than sages write

There is no mystery
But tis figured in the flowers
There is no history
But tis calendared in the bowers

Underwoods were full of pleasance
All to each in kindness bend
And every flower made obeisance
As a man unto his friend.





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