' With all the good will in the world, I do not find myself
able to rise to these heights; in fact, they rather seem to deserve
Wordsworth's description, as mere obliquities of admiration.
Taken as a whole, Emerson's poetry is of that kind which springs, not
from excitement of passion or feeling, but from an intellectual demand
for intense and sublimated expression. We see the step that lifts him
straight from prose to verse, and that step is the shortest possible.
The flight is awkward and even uncouth, as if nature had intended feet
rather than wings. It is hard to feel of Emerson, any more than
Wordsworth could feel of Goethe, that his poetry is inevitable. The
measure, the colour, the imaginative figures, are the product of search,
not of spontaneous movements of sensation and reflection combining in a
harmony that is delightful to the ear. They are the outcome of a
discontent with prose, not of that high-strung sensibility which compels
the true poet into verse. This must not be said without exception. _The
Threnody_, written after the death of a deeply loved child, is a
beautiful and impressive lament. Pieces like _Musquetaquid_, the
_Adirondacs_, the _Snowstorm_, _The Humble-Bee_, are pretty and pleasant
bits of pastoral. In all we feel the pure breath of nature, and
The primal mind,
That flows in streams, that breathes in wind.
There is a certain charm of _naivete_, that recalls the unvarnished
simplicity of the Italian painters before Raphael.
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