Can make the wild blood start
In its mystic springs."

Impressed with the grandeur of the poet's vocation, Emerson was more or less indifferent to the art of versification. He rose above ingenious tricks and petty fancies. He has been called a poet "wanting the accomplishment of verse." depended for success upon grandeur of thought, and truth of revelation. "For it is not metres," he says, "but a metremaking argument, that makes a poem, a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing." Again in "Merlin," he says:

"Great is the art,

Great be the manners, of the bard.

He shall not his brain encumber
With the coil of rhythm and number;
But, leaving rule and pale forethought,
He shall aye climb

For his rhyme."

Emerson was a loving student of nature.

He reminds us

of Wordsworth in his painstaking observation. His exquisite appreciation of natural beauty is often expressed in words nobly wedded to the sense. In "The Snow-Storm," the retiring north wind

"Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow."

And again in "Wood-Notes:

"Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,

Or dip thy paddle in the lake,

But it carves the bow of beauty there,

And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.”

He deduces from the humblest objects in nature the richest lessons of practical wisdom. To him the humblebee is

"Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher.
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,

Thou dost mock at fate and care,

Leave the chaff, and take the wheat."

He knew the sweet, soothing influence of nature, of which Bryant spoke. In "Musketaquid," he says:

"All my hurts

My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,

A quest of river grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salves my worst wounds."

Notwithstanding his treasures of beauty and wisdom, Emerson can hardly be a popular poet. He dwells in the higher regions of song. He must be content with a small but select audience. He does not deal in sentimentality—" poetry fit to be put round frosted cake;" he does not clothe his thought in the richest music of numbers. He is profoundly thoughtful; he earnestly strives to voice the speechless messages of the Over-soul. He grows upon us as we grasp more fully his meaning. Though not the most entertaining of our poets, he brings us the deepest and most helpful messages. His poetry,

like his prose, brings courage and hope to burdened and struggling men. He calls them to sincerity, to faith, to truth. In the tasks that come to us, divine help is near:

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must,

The youth replies, I can."

If there are any who question this estimate, let them read, besides the poems already mentioned, "Each and All,” “The Problem," "The Rhodora," "Astræa," "Sursum Corda," "Ode

to Beauty," "Give All to Love," "Voluntaries," and many others.

Emerson was peculiar in his literary methods. It is doubtful whether we have had another author so frugal in husbanding every thought. Besides the work done in his study day by day, he was accustomed to jot down in a note-book the stray thoughts that came to him in conversation or on his walks. The suggestions that occurred to him in his studies, conversations, and meditations he elaborated in a commonplace book, where he noted the subject of each paragraph. He thus preserved the best thoughts of his most fertile moments. When he had occasion to prepare an essay or a lecture, he brought together all the paragraphs relating to the subject in his commonplace books, supplying, at the same time, such new connective matter as might be necessary. This method will explain the evident absence of logical treatment in most of his writings, and also account for the fact, noted by Alcott, that "you may begin at the last paragraph and read backwards." Emerson subjected his writings to repeated and exacting revisions. Paragraphs were condensed, and every superfluous sentence and word were mercilessly pruned away. "Nowhere else," as Burroughs says, "is there such a preponderance of pure statement, of the very attar of thought, over the bulkier, circumstantial, qualifying, or secondary elements."

The year 1867 is indicated as about the limit of his working life. He gave pathetic expression to his experience in the poem entitled "Terminus :

"It is time to be old,

To take in sail :

The god of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said No more.""

The closing years of his life resembled an ever-deepening twilight. Hearing, sight, memory, slowly but gradually gave

way. At last, April 27, 1882, surrounded by those he loved, he was beckoned “to his vaster home." Shall we not say that his life was beautiful? Men testified of him that he was radiant with goodness, that his presence was like a benediction, that he exhibited the meekness and gentleness of Christ. To have been such a man is better than to have been a great writer.