revelations come on us in snatches and glimpses when we least expect them, and so with these short questionings we may even gain somewhat of the answer.

"Thy dangerous glances

Made women of men ;
New-born we are melting
Into nature again."

The rich carelessness of Emerson's muse is well developed in these lines:

“ Lavish, lavish Promiser,

Nigh persuading gods to err:
Guest of million painted forms
Which in turn thy glory warms:
The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,
The acorn's cup, the rain-drop's arc,
The swinging spider's silver line,
The ruby of the drop of wine,
The shining pebble of the pond,

Thou inscribest with a bond

In thy momentary play

Would bankrupt nature to repay."

A mere versifier would have made those images into a hundred lines; the true poet condenses; the elegant writer diffuses, till it becomes an atmosphere rather than a world.

The conclusion of this beautiful string of suggestive questionings and half-answered doubts is very fine.

"All that's good and great with thee

Works in close conspiracy;

Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely

To report thy features only,
And the cold and purple morning,

Itself with thoughts of thee adorning :

The leafy dell, the city mart,

Equal trophies of thy art:

E'en the flowing azure air
Thou hast touched for my despair.
And if I languish into dreams,
Again I meet thy ardent beams,
Queen of things. I dare not die
In Being's deep, past ear and eye,
Lest thee I find the same deceiver,
And be the sport of fate for ever.
Dread Power, but dear! if God thou be,

Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me."

There is nothing puling in these verses. A thorough mastery of the meaning contained in them is as good a lesson of mental logic as we need desire, and sharpens the intellect, as well as delights the poetical taste.

Mr. Emerson has, in some bold, clear lines, summed up his definition of true poetry.

66

66 TO MERLIN.

Thy trivial harp will never please,

Or fill my craving ear:

Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,

Free, peremptory, and clear.
No jingling serenader's art,

Nor treble of piano strings,

Can make the wild blood start

In its mystic springs!

The kingly bard

Must strike the chords rudely and hard,

As with hammer, or with mace,

That they may render back.

Chide me not, laborious band,

For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand

Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,

But 'tis figured in the flowers;

Was never secret history,

But birds told it in the bowers.

The harvest from the field,

Homeward brought the oxen strong;

A second crop thine acres yield,

Which I gather in a song."

We are quite aware how seldom casual readers pause long enough over poetry to find out all its meaning; but the meaning and the power are there, and the reader, not the poet, is deficient.

Mr. Emerson's power has not its foundation in the human heart: the roots of his being are in the intellect. Consequently he is deficient in one of the two great elements of genius. That this narrows his scope is too evident to need anything beyond the mere statement.

We will give a remarkable instance of this want of power to rouse the feelings. It is some verses he has written on the death of a little child. Surely, few things are so susceptible of pathos as this; but mark how hard, dry, and metaphysical the poet is.

66 ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD.

"Returned this day, the south wind searches,
And finds young pines and budding birches,
But finds not the budding man ;

Nature who lost him, cannot remake him,
Fate let him fall, fate can't retake him;
Nature, fate, men, him seek in vain."

An American critic well observes on this, "that the voice of lamentation is lost in a vague speculation on fate, interesting only to the intellect." It is difficult to find a subject more capable of touching regrets than the death of a child, and still more difficult to find a poet who has so completely failed in awaking one tender memory.

We shall take advantage of this circumstance to contrast several poets under the same inspiration, and mark how different are all their moods. Nevertheless, all except Emerson have the chief weight on the human heart.

Wordsworth, in his lament for a daughter "Dead and gone," puts the regrets of memory into an old man's mouth. Although years have passed since the blow fell, how fresh the wound still remains!

"Our work, said I, was well begun,

Then from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought.

"A second time did Matthew stop,
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain top,

To me he made reply:

"Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind,
A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

"With rod and line I 'sued the sport,

Which that sweet season gave,

And coming to the church, stopped short,
Beside my daughter's grave.

"Nine summers had she scarcely seen,

The pride of all the vale,

And then she sang-she would have been

A very nightingale.

"Six feet in earth my Emma lay,

And yet I loved her more,

For so it seemed, than till that day

I e'er had loved before."

And in another poem, how truly he touches the tenderest

portion of the heart, when he says: