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... of which every being always has and always will exist. However, due to Emerson's mistake, the two texts disagree on the nomenclature for this supreme force. To Emerson's credit, this poem's very existence indicates that he is considering and exploring philosophical viewpoints which are alien to the almost exclusively Christian culture of his era. Nonetheless, the title of the poem "Brahma" is misleading, and so Emerson has failed to share the message of the Bhagavad-Gita in an accurate manner. Likewise, Emerson misrepresents Hindu beliefs in his poem "Hamatreya." In Hindu scripture, Hamatreya is a young man who loses all his earthly ambitions when the earth chants a song to him. Emerson uses Hamatreya as the narrator of his poem, but the theme of "Hamatreya" differs greatly from Hindu teachings. The poem addresses the question of ownership--whether humans own the land or the land owns the humans. By specifically naming each of the landlords-- "Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint," and their agricultural products-- "Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples wool and wood," Emerson demonstrates the dependence that humans have upon the earth (lines 1, 3). However, because the landlords work upon the land, they come to see their crops as a result of their own work, rather than a result of nature's processes, and they develop a sense of ownership of the land. The landlord "affirm[s]" the actions of nature, and contemplates how his "domain" will best "suit me" (lines 10, 18, 19). These landlords do not consider that death comes for every person, and that it returns them to the soil which they claim to own (lines 25-26). The "Earth-Song," the second poem nested within "Hamatreya," is Nature's answer to the landlords' assertions of ownership. "'Mine and yours;/Mine, not yours,/ Earth endures'" indicates a relationship where Nature actually has ownership of man. During life, the landlords have a partnership with nature which gives them a feeling of ownership of the earth, but once a landlord dies, the earth belongs only to itself. The change in stanza, line and diction in the "Earth-Song" brings further attention to the contrast between the landlords' and Nature's viewpoint. The lines shorten and are broken into stanzas, whereas the language becomes less like casual storytelling and more formal, structured, and intended for poetic effect. The landlords' lines: "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" (lines 19-21) therefore have a different poetic effect as well as a different message from Nature's lines: "Here is the land, Shaggy with wood, With its old valley, Mound and flood. But the heritors?-- Fled like the flood's foam." (lines 44-49) In the last stanza, where Hamatreya speaks about himself, rather than about the landlords, he upholds Emerson's view of nature, but not Hindu beliefs. The length and language of Hamatreya's lines indicate that he has been so completely converted to Nature's way of thinking that he adopts Nature's language structure, but Nature's thought does not correspond to the Hindu way of thinking. It is impossible for Nature to endure eternally because it is only a physical manifestation of Brahman, the only eternal force in the universe. Therefore, Nature cannot possibly possess the landlords because, like the landlords, Nature does not even possess itself. Furthermore, Hamatreya could not possibly have come to the same conclusion in Hindu scripture as he did in Emerson's poem. The theme of ownership in "Hamatreya" is in closer keeping with Emerson's own ideas about nature and Transcendentalism, than it is with Hindu thought. Emerson, while he has again misrepresented Hinduism, has at least made an important connection between Hindu ideals and his own world. Emerson's "Two Rivers" differs from the previous two poems in that instead of inaccurately restating Hindu beliefs, Emerson is applying them to his own life in order to form a new philosophy. When Emerson addresses the Musketaquit River, he also indicates the presence of a second, metaphysical river: Thou in thy narrow banks art pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through life it forward flows. (lines 5-8) This second river possesses much the same qualities as Brahman, but is never named as such. Moreover, Emerson uses the local Musketaquit River, not the Holy Ganges, to help achieve a contrast between the physical and the metaphysical rivers. This demonstrates how Emerson has stepped beyond interpreting Hindu philosophy in terms of his own life, inaccurately paraphrasing Hinduism along the way, and has instead used Hinduism as a basis for developing an entirely n...