In his once-famous 1836 essay, “Nature,” the American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) set out to “interrogate the grand apparition, that shines so peacefully around us.” “Water,” today’s Poem of the Day, interrogates one element in that “grand apparition,” according to Emerson’s scheme for understanding the natural world: on the one hand, the permanence of nature’s laws, and on the other hand, nature’s fluid relationship with human consciousness as it both shapes and is shaped by our perceptions.

What better image than water for that complicated “conspiracy” between nature and spirit? In this little trimeter poem, whose lines quickly resolve into rhymed couplets, the water possesses a measure of human-like understanding, lending itself as a commodity for human use. At the same time, as the ending reminds us, beautiful and “elegant” though the water appears to us, its ways are not our ways.  

Water 
by Ralph Waldo Emerson 

The water understands 
Civilization well; 
It wets my foot, but prettily, 
It chills my life, but wittily, 
It is not disconcerted, 
It is not broken-hearted: 
Well used, it decketh joy, 
Adorneth, doubleth joy: 
Ill used, it will destroy, 
In perfect time and measure 
With a face of golden pleasure 
Elegantly destroy. 

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.