n literature and
conversation. It is to be remembered that Emerson is one of those
authors whose popularity must diffuse itself from above downwards. And
after all, few will dare assert that "The Vanity of Human Wishes" is
greater as a poem than Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," or Keats's "Ode
to a Nightingale," because no line in either of these poems is half so
often quoted as

"To point a moral or adorn a tale."

We cannot do better than begin our consideration of Emerson's poetry
with Emerson's own self-estimate. He says in a fit of humility, writing
to Carlyle:--

"I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low department of
literature, the reporters, suburban men."

But Miss Peabody writes to Mr. Ireland:--

"He once said to me, 'I am not a great poet--but whatever is of me
_is a poet_.'"

These opposite feelings were the offspring of different moods and
different periods.

Here is a fragment, written at the age of twenty-eight, in which his
self-distrust and his consciousness of the "vision," if not "the
faculty, divine," are revealed with the brave nudity of the rhythmic
confessional:--

"A dull uncertain brain,
But gifted yet to know
That God has cherubim who go
Singing an immortal strain,
Immortal here below.
I know the mighty bards,
I listen while they sing,
And now I know
The secret store
Which these explore
When they with torch of genius pierce
The tenfold clouds that cover
The riches of the universe
From God's adoring lover.
And if to me it is not given
To fetch one ingot thence
Of that unfading gold of Heaven
His merchants may dispense,
Yet well I know the royal mine
And know the sparkle of its ore,
Know Heaven's truth from lies that shine,--
Explored, they teach us to explore."

These lines are from "The Poet," a series of fragments given in the
"Appendix," which, with his first volume, "Poems," his second, "May-Day,
and other Pieces," form the complete ninth volume of the new series.
These fragments contain some of the loftiest and noblest passages to be
found in his poetical works, and if the reader should doubt which of
Emerson's self-estimates in his two different moods spoken of above had
most truth in it, he could question no longer after reading "The Poet."

Emerson has the most exalted ideas of the true poetic function, as this
passage from "Merlin" sufficiently shows:--

"Thy trivial harp will never