EMERSON’S VIEW OF A NATION’S STRENGTH

 

EMERSON’S VIEW OF A NATION’S STRENGTH

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),  the American  poet, essayist and literary journalist, who was also a great mystic, spiritualist and philosopher had great trust in the faculties and virtues of man.  

For laying the unshakeable foundations of a great nation, he preferred to any other  alternative the devotion of brave and tireless men.

And  the foundations of man himself , according Emerson,  are not in matter, but in spirit whose element is eternity. Undoubtedly, there are , who in sleep-walking, seek money or power, but if you wake them, they instantly quit these false sources  and leap to the true ones.

In his famous essay “The Oversoul” , Emerson tells his readers: “The soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all  the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses  these as hands and feet; is not a faculty but a light; is not the intellect and the will; but the master of the intellect and the will; is  the background of our being, in which they lie --- an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within and from behind, a light shine through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all”.

It is this vision of the enlightened man which Emerson had in his mind when he said  in the following poem : “Not gold but only men  can make/A people great and strong.  

A NATION’s STRENGTH

What makes a nation’s pillars high

And its foundations strong?

What makes it mighty to defy

The foes  that found it strong?

 

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand

Go down in battle shock,

Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,

Not on abiding rock.

 

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust

Of empires passed away,

The blood had turned their stones to rust,

Their glory to decay.

 

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown

Has seemed to nations sweet,

But God has struck Its luster down

In ashes at his feet.

 

Not gold but only men can make

A people great and strong,

Men who for truth and honor’s sake

Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while other sleep,

Who dare while others fly

They build a nation’s pillars deep

And lift them to the sky.

 

                Finally, a critic has rightly said  that one goes to Emerson, not for conclusions, but for beginnings, not for knowledge, but for provocation.

 

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18^th May 2021                                                                                                    G. R. Kanwal