A Meditation:  Unutterable Love (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I “had a solitary, thoughtful hour,” this morning, wrote Emerson as he journeyed by ship across the Atlantic in 1833.

“The clouds were touched

And in their silent faces might be read

Unutterable love.”

The clouds “shone with light that shines on Europe, Africa, and the Nile, and I opened my spirit’s ear to their most ancient hymn.”

The sea-gull, the waves of the ocean, the rising mists, the wind, “under that arch of light…are works of art better worth your enthusiasm,” than all the masterpieces of Europe.  Emerson experienced “Unutterable love” in what he called “these masterpieces of Eternal power…” He realized in that moment that “You need not go far to seek what ye would not seek at all if it were not within you.”