Like the Romantic poets from which they drew their inspiration, the Transcendentalists believed the divine (God) could be experienced in and through nature. Nature , they asserted, holds an exalted place as a teacher that one can learn from without the need of books or potentially-corrupting traditions of thought. Love...
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Like the Romantic poets from which they drew their inspiration, the Transcendentalists believed the divine (God) could be experienced in and through nature. Nature, they asserted, holds an exalted place as a teacher that one can learn from without the need of books or potentially-corrupting traditions of thought. Love of nature permeates this poem, as does the idea that God can be found in it, such as when the speaker states:
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
Another transcendentalist idea that Emerson conveys in the poem is that of harmony. The beauty of nature is seen in the relationship of one object to another, revealing God's perfect plan. Context is everything. As Emerson puts it:
All are needed by each one;Nothing is fair or good alone.
The poem illustrates this concept of harmony when the speaker writes of the lovely and "delicate" shells he sees scattered on the sand by the ocean. They are so beautiful that he feels compelled to gather them up and bring them home. However, once he gets them home, away from their natural habitat of sand and surf, they seem lifeless to him, becoming "poor, unsightly, noisome things."
In a similar example, the speaker notes that when a man marries his beloved and takes her home to his "hermitage," she is suddenly like a caged bird and loses her luster: "the gay enchantment was undone."
Thus the poem presents two important transcendental ideas: that God can be seen in nature, and that nature is in most perfect harmony when it is not disturbed by manmade ideas and objects.