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The Love That Holds Too Tightly

From Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Emerson's 'The Daemonic Love'. Emerson uses 'daemon' in the old Greek sense: the spirit that draws one person to another. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American Transcendentalist philosopher and poet, published this poem in the mid-nineteenth century. He contrasts 'highest Love', a force that connects all beings, with 'daemonic love', a possessive passion that isolates, dominates and ends in remorse. Romantic love, he argues, becomes destructive when it turns exclusive and self-seeking, cutting the bonds of family and community. The poem is worth reading as a searching moral critique of obsession from one of America's foremost nineteenth-century thinkers. This text reflects its era; a few period terms have been modernised.

Band

Silver · First-year university levelTypical starting range: adult

Length

long · about 1422 words in 4 sections · 1 picture

Source

Poems, Ralph Waldo Emerson

First published

see the About page in the reader

Regions

Canada · United States

Included formats

• · Web reader and PDF
• · EPUB for e-readers
• · Home-print sheet
• · Folded booklet
• · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
• · Worksheet
• · Quick Check (10 questions) with answer key
• · Read-aloud script
• · Teacher’s Edition (members)

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