Emerson \"Give Me Health and a Day,

Emerson

"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous."

Writing about beauty in Nature, Emerson extols the virtues of appreciating the details in the natural world. The "day" he refers to here is literal: as the author has just finished describing the break of dawn and the rhythms and cycles of the universe. He follows this line with: "The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos." Health is also a literal reference to the mental and physical ability to appreciate the beauty of nature. To have health, and a day of rest, helps one to feel full appreciation for the natural world. The reference to the "pomp of emperors" is also straightforward: the posh trappings of materialism are nothing compared to the riches in the natural world. All the crown jewels in the world would not compare to the glistening sun. Materialistic items that are commonly thought of as "beautiful" seem "ridiculous" compared to the wonders of nature. Emerson also suggests that it would be ridiculous to place a higher value on material items than on the natural world's beautiful bounty.

b: "The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible."

In Nature, Emerson becomes mystical in parts. One of those parts comes when Emerson writes, "Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind." After this, the author places in quotation marks the line, "The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." The visible world is the manifest universe: the things we see such as flower, sky, and tree. The relation of its parts refers to how these things relate to one another, on a practical and spiritual level. On a practical level, the sun and the plant certainly do interact in the process of photosynthesis. On a spiritual level, the world of the invisible precedes the world of the manifest. This is a neo-Platonic worldview: rooted in Plato's concept of the forms. The forms are the ideas or archetypes. Forms reside in the invisible world, which is every bit as real if not realer than the physical world.

c: "A man is a god in ruins."

The symbol of the fallen god is one central to Western religious traditions; in fact, the devil was a Christian representation of a fallen angel. Here, Emerson refers to the concept of a god who has fallen into ruin: which is a unique perspective for someone who was in the Christian tradition. Here, Emerson allies himself more with a polytheistic faith than a monotheistic one.

Moreover, Emerson refers to the human condition of one of wasted potential. If human beings can rediscover their "innocence," they will reclaim their godly status. In fact, Emerson also suggests that human beings have the potential to achieve immortality by remembering their divine heritage. Refering to the Christian tradition, Emerson mentions the Messiah, too: who "pleads" with people to "return to paradise." A human being is a god, but a god who has forgotten how to be divine.

d: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers, and divines."