Emerson and Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a widely known writer from the Transcendentalist movement, wrote extensively about nature. One of his poems, The Rhodora, examines the purpose for beauty in nature:

On being asked, whence is the flower.

    In 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.


The narrator is questioning why such a beautiful flower is “wasted on the earth and sky” where no one can see it. The brook is “desert” - there are no eyes there to appreciate the beauty. So what is the point of the rhodora, or any other beautiful thing in nature, if not to be seen by something? He then writes that “beauty is its own excuse for Being.” He capitalizes “Being” because he is making the existence of beauty and nature sacred. He decides that God put humans and the rest of nature here on earth for the same reason. The poem suggests that the reason is that everything in nature has its own worth in and of itself; it is beautiful and good without needing anything to approve of it.
    Another of Emerson’s poems that deals with nature is Each and All.

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky; —
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she stayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; —
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth:" —
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird; —
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

The poem describes various aspects of nature - the cow that moos for its own reasons, not for anyone else’s pleasure. The narrator adores a sparrow’s song and brings the bird home and puts it in a cage. But its beauty is not the same in the woods; the whole thing is necessary, bird song and trees and sky and everything else. He describes the way pieces of nature cannot exist completely by themselves because they are so integrated with one another. He then writes about the intoxicating beauty of nature, but in a long list because it is the whole thing that is truly beautiful. he then “yielded himself to the perfect whole.” Yielded because people so often try to control nature when it is something that needs to be appreciated and respected, not taken advantage of.  The perfect whole because nature is perfect when it is together and in harmony. When it is disrupted, it is less than what it is in its rightful place.
    These poems still ring true for many. Although today’s society takes advantages of animals in many ways, refusing to respect them in their rightful place in nature. Emerson would not approve of the ways animals are treated today. The Rhodora emphasizes the beauty of each individual thing in nature, but Each and All enforces the importance of the connection everything has to everything else. When we subject animals to the cruelty they experience in factory farms, we are treating them as though they do not have worth in and of themselves. We are just treating them as things we can use to satisfy our desires. When we take them out of nature, we are disrupting the connection nature has, and we are making them seem less beautiful and worthwhile than they really are. A bird in the wild is free and happy and majestic. A bird trapped in a factory farm, barely alive and in constant pain, looks ugly and horrifying. Of course we don’t see the beauty in these animals because we treat them as things. We make them ugly. No wonder people have no problem killing these animals. If we all took time to consider nature in its proper place, we might not abuse them so much.