" These will puzzle no one who has read carefully that
first book on "Nature." They all preach the gospel of intuition,
instinctive trust in the Universe, faith in the ecstatic moment
of vision into the things that are unseen by the physical eye.
Self-reliance, as Emerson's son has pointed out, means really
God-reliance; the Over-Soul--always a stumbling-block to
Philistines--means that high spiritual life into which all men
may enter and in which they share the life of Deity. Emerson is
stern enough in expounding the laws of compensation that run
through the universe, but to him the chief law is the law of the
ever-ascending, victorious soul.
This radiant optimism permeates his poems. By temperament a
singer as well as a seer and sayer, Emerson was nevertheless
deficient in the singing voice. He composed no one great poem,
his verse presents no ideas that are not found in his prose. In
metre and rhyme he is harsh and willful. Yet he has marvelous
single phrases and cadences. He ejaculates transports and
ecstasies, and though he cannot organize and construct in verse,
he is capable here and there of the true miracle of transforming
fact and thought into true beauty.
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