re: #62 SanFranciscoZionist

One of my coworkers believes that Emerson’s “The Rhodora” is the worst poem ever written in English.

As a public service, here it is:

The Rhodora
On being asked, whence is the flower.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

I grant that’s terrible, but my vote stays with Invictus.

SFZ, I hadn’t realized that Frost’s Design is (or so it seems to me) influenced by/a response to Rhodora. No contest. Rhodora is trite; Design is scary.