Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, “’Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.”

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
“This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.
’Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.”

Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth say:—

Earth-Song

“Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide—
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.

“The lawyer’s deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.

“Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
But the heritors?—
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.

“They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?”

When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is really one of those makers of American literature without whose names we cannot do with and he has imparted to what it is still a matter of talk and reckoning, scholarship and poetic judgement. A romantic, he was a transcendentalist and his works are replete with ruminations and the wisdom of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Puranans is in him and he can think reasonably applying reasoning. Really, he is the that American scholar who can teach with his knowledge and wisdom. Why to have such a lust? Can the earth be ours? We are but a part of it. The poem is a lesson to all. It means to say that mere idea of more and more possession is not good. The earth was never ours when we came to. Can we let it go unheard the earth-song?

The theme of the poem is, you keep amassing wealth, but keeping in view the good earth, the environment. We know it what did it do the forefathers, the ancestors. How did they go on ordering and commanding? What idea did they attach to? But the last that we mean to say is this that the good earth, let it be good earth. Let us not turn it into the possession of our lust, avarice and greed. 

Hamatreya, not Dattatreya, he uses it in a distorted way to say the things of his own. We do not know what he does. But this is a quality of his poetry. Given to reasoning, knowledge and wisdom, the poem is but an enlargement of the self-talk  and we need to enlarge our space, need to discern and dispel whatever darkness be it in us and he did it as for acquiring and imparting  knowledge.

Emerson mocks the colonialists and the colonizers, the settlers and the settled. Settle, but call you not the all yours. Let it be of theirs too. Let your settlement turn it not in your greedy possession. The wheat or the rose, though we need it both, there is something to feel of the rose too.

What it in olden laws, laws legislated by the elders? Have you gone by the  earth’s laws? Morality’s laws and conscience’s laws, first go by to comprehend it all. What does your morality say it? Ask your heart to find the answer. What does it your conscience? Say you!

Hamatreya or Maitreya, what is it? What does Emerson want to refer to? Some say it that Emerson has misquoted and misrepresented it Hamatreya, that it has been from the Vishnu Purana. Whatever be that, Emerson uses that for some specific purpose. The bone of contention is this that he has understood it all which we fail to mean it. We say it that this is mine, that is yours, but in reality nothing is our own. In the words of Kabir, the wrapper we use is but dirty, the body to which we have from the Almighty we have abused it. Ego, hypocrisy and aristocracy these mean it not before.

The earth, whose is it? And for what? How to keep the earth green as Nature has the laws of own? Whose are the lands? Who the inhabitants? Who the original settlers or natives? Who are the dharti-putras, the sons of the soil, of the earth? The landlords can say that the plots are theirs. But are those ours? If it is so, why do we start anything with bhumi-pujan, worship of the earth? 

The earth is like our mother, the good earth which but rears us, makes us grow which but we know it not as this is our nature to be disloyal and ungrateful. What do we care for this earth?

Whose land? How the deeds of settlement and land registration? Who the registrar of which? Whose land who is registering? The tillers too have the rights of theirs. Only the tillers too are not the sole authority to have the rights over.

Emerson in a muffled voice tells about the settlers and their settlements, the original inhabitants and their property rights.

The whole poem is cast under the image of Vishnu and Vishnulila which but Maitreya’s guru is speaking through, narrating to. The Lord too is not satisfied with the way the kings are behaving, calling the earth, parts of it their own.

Though the critics are confused about the picking of Hamatreya, but instead of, Hey, Maitreya may be taken it for our curiosity. The pomp of power, pride of pelf, Emerson has never and this is what adds to.