Concord Hymn

Emerson designed the poem for public consumption, designed it for accessibility—the poem’s form is direct and clear and reader-friendly. The form is inviting, recalling the standard form of a Christian hymn: four quatrains, four stanzas of four lines each, with alternating lines brought in two spaces. That recurring design suggests stability and permanence. That simple and elegant architecture gives the poem a kind of integrity that suggests the votive stone itself.

The form then is strikingly columnar, set in the page with a kind of massive there-ness. The poet resists intricate or original formal experimentation. It is helpful to compare Emerson’s stately engraved-in-stone formal structure to two other of his contemporary poets that have also come to define Emerson’s century: the playful eccentricities of Emily Dickinson’s subtly musical lyrics, and the brawling and careless yawp of Walt Whitman’s cascading catalogues and the manic energy of his boldly irregular lines. Such flighty and idiosyncratic designs distract and inevitably position the poet at the center of the creative process. Emerson stands apart and allows the form itself to put the attention where he believes it belongs: on the heroics of the Concord militia itself.