The poem “Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson was written during the American Romantic Period when the literacy movement was romanticism and transcendentalism. Romanticism emphasized emotion, a love of nature, imagination, as well as the glorification of the past. It also included the concept applied to gothic literature filled with terror and horror and a powerful feeling of ‘what is going to happen.’ Transcendentalism was an idealistic philosophical, literary and social movement that focused on intuitive knowledge of morality and truths instead of rationalism. This subset of romanticism was the belief of individualism and being in touch with nature in order to understand the nature of reality. Nature is sacred and in order to be independent, one must connect with it.
“Concord Hymn” has four quatrains and each
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Emerson uses words such as stream, green bank, that relate to nature and even capitalizes Time to show emphasis and importance. These lines indicate the mortality of human life as well as memory. The line “swept / Down the dark stream which seaward creeps” (7-8). This could suggest the soldiers have a horrific fate and were dead, “swept away in creepy darkness,” which shows the gothic side of romanticism. But, then Emerson says the sea is calm and should not be feared, just as death and the deaths of both “foe” and “conqueror” (5-6) should not be seen as a scary thing. Emerson calls the river “this soft stream” (9). It is no longer seen as chaotic and dangerous just as life is when one sits back and reflects. Emerson is relating human activities to that of nature, suggesting that we can understand and appreciate our history by observing nature and not being afraid of