This video consists of a compilation of quotes from the 19th century American transcendentalist poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman about nature, humanity and philosophy recited over various footage that I shot around my home for a school project. Please feel free to rate and/or comment on the video if you would like. Thanks folks!
CREDITS:
Cast - Ralph Waldo Emerson (Andy Bailey), Walt Whitman (Jasper Gates)
Film Footage - Shot on location (Houston, TX) with a Casio Exilim EX-S10 Digital Camera
FROM NATURE ----
Emerson: "With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."
Whitman: "The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future."
Emerson: "Few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun."
Whitman: "I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you."
Emerson: "We speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind."
Whitman: "I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd."
Emerson: "I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency."
Whitman: "I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it."
Emerson: "Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. But your conformity explains nothing."
Whitman: "The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides..."
Emerson: "The lover of nature is he who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in the man, or in a harmony of both."
Whitman: "Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!"
Emerson: "Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself."
Whitman: "They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it."
Emerson: "He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose."
Whitman: "These and all else were to me the same as they are to you, The men and women I saw were all near to me, Others the same—others who look back on me because I look'd forward to them, What is it then between us? I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, I too had receiv'd identity by my body, My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meager?"
Whitman (cont.): "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Stop this day and night with me and you shall posses the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left), You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them your self."
Whitman (together): "We use you and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us, We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also, You furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul."
Emerson (together): "It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn."
Whitman: "And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me, And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me."
"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won."
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Transcendentalismby BeatlesAndRedskins13,770 views
Well done. Thank you.
Avarakedavra 1 year ago