Let Me Go Where I Will ~ Poem by Emerson

Let me go where’er I will,

I hear a sky-born music still:

It sounds from all things old,

It sounds from all things young,

From all that’s fair, from all that’s foul,

Peals out a cheerful song.

It is not only in the rose,

It is not only in the bird,

Not only where the rainbow glows,

Nor in the song of woman heard,

But in the darkest, meanest things

There alway, alway something sings.

‘Tis not in the high stars alone,

Nor in the cup of budding flowers,

Nor in the redbreast’s mellow tone,

Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,

But in the mud and scum of things

There alway, alway something sings.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson.