What is the tone of "The Rhodora" by Emerson (link to poem in the details)?

Question

I can't figure out the tone of this poem:
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/poems/rhodora.html

Help!?

Answer 1

OK, I'll give it a shot.

To start with, and for the first half of the poem, the tone is dark and cold; demonstrated with words and phrases such as: "winds", "solitude", "in the woods", "damp", "desert", "black". We also get a hint of violence with the word "pierced".

There is also a sense of futility, especially in the waste of beauty. The first line of the poem is a question, "whence is the flower?" We are, perhaps, surprised to find that the beauty of the flower is wasted; it is "spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook" Here it cannot please men, but it is to "please the desert" ie. the empty wilderness, and the "sluggish brook". "Sluggish" adds to the negative tone of the surroundings. the beauty of the petals is contrasted with the ugly blackness of the "pool" into which they fall. The alliteration of the plosive ('p'), in "purple petals" and "pool" emphasises this contrast.

Here the tone of the poem becomes more positive. The "red-bird" 'courts' the flower. And the speaker expesses a love for it. He says, explicitly this time, that the rhodora's beauty "is wasted on earth and sky". The poet would perhaps sooner see the flower in some kind of heaven, with the "self same power" that is (I presume) God.

Sorry if my ideas are a bit mixed up, but I write as I think. Hope this is of some help.

Answer 2

The Rhodora