By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to Aprils breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. Although in recent history, the term Shot Heard Round the World is attached to the game-winning home run by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson to win the National League Pennant in 1951, and synonymous with the shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the beginning of World War I, Emerson did not write this famous ode to baseball, nor did he live to see the wars of the Twentieth Century. Instead, he penned these few lines about the famous Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first official engagement between Britain and the Colonies in the American Revolutionary War. Specifically, Emersons poem describes the first shots fired by Patriots at the North Bridge in what is now Charlestown, in northwestern Boston, Massachusetts. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be Americas Intellectual Declaration of Independence.[1] Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emersons most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emersons nature was more philosophical than naturalistic: Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Emerson is one of several figures who took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world.[2] He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement,[3] and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was the infinitude of the private man.[4] Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of fellow Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.[5] i just found out its believed that a man named Ralph Waldo Emerson shot the shot heard around the world how interesting. how cool is that wow.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 01:15:04 +0000