Each and All analysis

A sparrow, shells, and a lover’s bride lose their beauty when removed from the contexts that made them meaningful.^[1]

The speaker finally returns to the whole natural scene and yields to it.

Beauty is relational rather than portable: the river, sky, sun, sand, and sea cannot be carried home with their objects.

Possession gives way to participation.^[2]

• Organic unity

  Each object participates in a larger system of natural and social meanings.

• Beauty and context

  Had left their beauty on the shore,

  With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

  Beauty includes place, sound, light, and motion.

• Possession versus participation

  The speaker’s attempts to bring things home isolate what he admired; the ending reverses that movement.

The 51-line poem unfolds as a continuous argument through linked examples, using flexible songlike rhythm.

Paired end rhymes and conversational pauses give the long narrative a measured movement.

• Aphorism

  All are needed by each one;

  Nothing is fair or good alone.

  Balanced syntax turns the governing idea into a memorable principle.

• Sensory imagery

  The bubbles of the latest wave

  Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;

  The shore’s beauty is environmental, not merely visual.

• Simile

  Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;—

  The romantic example echoes the earlier caged sparrow.

The poem was published in the Western Messenger in 1839 and reflects Emerson’s Transcendentalist interest in nature and unity.^[2]

Its local field, shore, and woodland scenes expand into a philosophy of interdependence.

• “The theme of ‘organic unity’.”

• “Beauty comes from the connection of all living and non-living things”

1. Academy of American Poets
2. Türk Dilbilim
3. Poem Analysis
4. EBSCO Research Starters