patching...
Welcome back, Patch Blogger!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Muscato's Musings

Let's Focus on Important And Valuable Gifts This Holiday Season

Easton residents should consider what is important this holiday season.

  About a year ago now I wrote this column – a Christmas and holiday seasons column – and early this morning as I put together and wrote one of a series of Christmas/holiday seasons columns I intend to write over the next few weeks, I felt compelled to go back to that column. I felt compelled to go back to that column in which I highlighted and excerpt the following passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, Gifts, published in 1844:  Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own …

Monday, December 19, 2011

Muscato's Musings

A "Portion Of Thyself"

The True and Most Precious Gift

  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote with so much insight and so artfully and so accurately about so many things.   In his essay, Gifts, published in 1844, he advised and reflected thus: Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts.  The only gift is a portion of thyself.  Thou must bleed for me.  Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.  This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man’s biography in conveyed in his gift, and every man’s wealth is an index of his merit.  But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy …

Got a Hot Tip?
 
 

Videos