Ellen Sturgis Hooper: cited as the most gifted of the Transcendentalist Movement

• I Slept, and Dreamed that Life was Beauty
• I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
• I woke, and found that life was Duty.
• Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
• Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
• And thou shalt find thy dream to be
• A noonday light and truth to thee.

• Wayfarers
• How they go by—those strange and dreamlike men!
• One glance on each, one gleam from out each eye,
• And that I never looked upon till now,
• Has vanished out of sight as instantly.
• Yet in it passed there a whole heart and life,
• The only key it gave that transient look;.
• But for this key its great event in time
• Of peace or strife to me a sealed book.

• Hymn of a Spirit Shrouded
• O God! who, in thy dear still heaven,
• Dost sit, and wait to see
• The errors, sufferings, and crimes
• Of our humanity,
• How deep must be thy Casual love!
• How whole thy final care!
• Since Thou, who rulest over all,
• Canst see, and yet canst bear.

• The Straight Road
• Beauty may be the path to highest good,
• And some successfully have it pursued.
• Thou, who wouldst follow, be well earned to see
• That way prove not a curvéd road to thee.
• The straightest path perhaps which may be sought,
• Lies through the great highway men call I ought.

• To R. W. E.
• Dry lighted soul, the ray that shines in thee,
•    Shot without reflex from primeval sun,
• We twine the laurel for the victories
•    Which thou on thought’s broad, bloodless field has won.

• Thou art the mountain where we climb to see
•    The land our feet have trod this many a year.
• Thou art the deep and crystal winter sky,
•    Where noiseless, one by one, bright stars appear.

• It may be Bacchus, at thy birth, forgot
•    That drop from out the purple grape to press
• Which is his gift to man, and so thy blood 
•    Doth miss the heat which ofttimes breeds excess.

• But, all more surely do we turn to thee
•    When the day’s heat and blinding dust are o’er,
• And cool our souls in thy refreshing air,
•    And find the peace which we had lost before.

Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1812-1848) was an American poet and member of the Transcendentalist Movement – and cited often as the most gifted of the poets in that group, which included such literary luminaries as Ralph Walso Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Thoreau. It seems the other members of the movement recognized Hooper’s talent – as Emerson often commissioned her to write verse for The Dial, the official publication of the movement, and an excerpt from her poem “The Wood-Fire” was quoted by Thoreau in his monumental work, Walden (1854).