A NATION’S STRENGTH

 

A NATION’S STRENGTH

‘A Nation’s Strength’ is a short poem written by the American poet, essayist and  philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He was born in 25^th May 1803 at Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and passed away at Concord, Massachusetts, United States, on 27^th April 1882.

Emerson was a student of theology, believed in the unity of man, nature and God, and blended romanticism with transcendentalism , which means  going beyond the limits of human knowledge, experience or reason, especially in religious and spiritual matters.

He  visited England in in 1833 , met English romantic poets S.T. Coleridge (1772-1834) and William Wordsworth (1780-1830) who were great admirers of nature’s inevitable   influence on the  moral character of human beings.   

            In his above-mentioned poem, Emerson emphasises that a nation’s strength,  greatness and sky-high progress depends not on its hoarding of gold  but on its brave, truthful and tireless men who continue to work while others go  to their beds and enjoy a comfortable sleep.

             Emerson does not tell us how we can have such men in any nation, but it is not difficult to imagine that he hints at educational, social, economic  and  political systems evolved and pursued  by both realistic and idealistic minds at the local, state, national and global levels.

            The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) , shows a similar way in his poem entitled Where the Mind is Without Fear which runs as follows:

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high: Where knowledge is free: Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth: Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action----Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”

            Now let us have a look at Emerson’s poem. It will need no great  effort to arrive at the conclusion that both the poets have an identical vision about a nation’s real strength.

“Not gold, but only men can make/A people great and strong--- /Men who, for truth and honour’s sake,/Stand fast and suffer long.  Brave men who work while others sleep,/Who dare while others fly,/They build a nation’s pillars deep, / And lift them to the sky. “