Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The Amulet
Your picture smiles as first it smiled,
The ring you gave is still the same,Your letter tells,
O changing child,No tidings since it came.
Give me an amulet
That keeps intelligence with you,
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.
Alas, that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.
The Fable
The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter,
"little pig":
Bun replied,
You are doubtless very big,
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up a year,And a sphere.
And I think it no disgraceTo occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,And not half so spry:
I'll not deny you makeA very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.
6 comments:
The poem that was posted was a touching love poem about a women who seems to have died a little while ago and was a small petite little girl of a woman who was the loveliest women in the world by his standards.
The Fable Analysis
In the poem, a squirrel and a mountain are having a conversation about who is greater. The mountain believes he is better than the
squirrel because he is large and mightier than the tiny squirrel.
I beleive the poem is about how different people have different talents and everyone is unique in their own ways.
For example,The Squirrel says "Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut."
He says that even though he may never have the ability to carry trees, or much less, be as tall and mighty as the mountain, the mountain will never have the ability to crack a nut or be as nimble as the squirrel. The Squirrel points out their talents and flaws, and in the end the two are rendered of equal stature and talent in the readers eye.
Part 2, The Amulet.
In my opinion, this poem was a bit harder to decode it's meaning as compared to The Fable.
I believe the man in the poem is having difficulty understanding his lovers affection towards him. Or possibly, she is giving him mixed messages.
The man then asks, Give me an amulet
That keeps intelligence with you,
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.
He wishes for an amulet that can read her emotions and change colors to tell if she loves him or not.
But despite his wishing, even a possession of which he speaks could never exist. I think he knows deep down in his heart, or suspects, she no longer loves him as stated in the last verse.
Alas, that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.
I am very impressed with Caitlin’s analysis of The Fable. She said almost everything I was going to say in a much more articulate way than I would have said it. The poem in my opinion is metaphor explaining how everyone is different and special in their own way.
I do not think that the woman or man that the writer is talking about has died. In my opinion the poem was about a person whom the writer loved that left him with only an amulet. By the way I also think the amulet is a mood stone or whatever that is “supposed” to tell your mood. That’s that whole red when you love and blue when you don’t thing.
I also think that the poem could be about a daughter or son that the writer no longer sees and who only sends non-informative letters. Or, like The Fable, the whole thing could be a metaphor for an underlying message, but I wouldn’t know what that would be.
The first poem is about a man who loves a woman but can not tell whether she still shares the same feeling toward him. He asks of her to give him an amulet then that will tell whether or not she is still feeling affectionate toward him by the color that the amulet turns. Unfortunatly he feels that she has giving up any feelings that he once felt in return.
In the second poem there is an argument between a squirrel and a mountain about who is more macho. The mountain tells of how great and monstrous he is compared to this scrawny little squirrel sitting in front of him. So, the squirrel replies by saying although he cannot carry a landscape full of trees on his back, he can still crack a nut. By this comment I believe the author is trying to prove how everyone has their own "ups and downs" and we are all good at something.
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