d a rival in every reader;
for then we all felt ourselves finer poets than ever sang of the season,
and did not know that our virtue was but an effect of Spring
herself,--an impression, not an expression of her loveliness, which must
pass with her. Now, when the early autumn is in every sense, and those
days when the year first awoke to consciousness have grown so far away,
we must perceive that no one has yet been allowed to speak so well for
the spring of our New World as this poet. The very irregularity of Mr.
Emerson's poem seems to be part of its verisimilitude, and it appears as
if all the pauses and impulses and mysterious caprices of the
season--which fill the trees with birds before blossoms, and create the
soul of sweetness and beauty in the May-flowers under the dead leaves of
the woodlands, while the meadows are still bare and brown--had so
entered into this song, that it could not emulate the deliberation and
consequence of art. The "May-Day" is to the critical faculty a
succession of odes on Spring, celebrating now one aspect and now
another, and united only by their title; yet since an entire idea of
spring is evolved from them, and they awaken the same emotions that the
youth of the year stirs in us, we must accept the result as something
undeniably great and good. Of course, we can complain of the way in
which it is brought about, just as we can upbraid the New England
climate, though its uncertain and desultory April and May give us at
last the most beautiful June weather in the world.

The poem is not one that invites analysis, though it would be easy
enough to instance striking merits and defects. Mr. Emerson, perhaps,
more than any other modern poet, gives the notion of inspiration; so
that one doubts, in reading him, how much to praise or blame. The most
exquisite effects seem not to have been invited, but to have sought
production from his unconsciousness; graces alike of thought and of
touch seem the unsolicited gifts of the gods. Even the doubtful quality
of occasional lines confirms this impression of unconsciousness. One
cannot believe that the poet would wittingly write,

"Boils the world in tepid lakes,"

for this statement has, for all that the reader can see to the contrary,
the same value with him as that preceding verse, telling how the waxing
heat

"Lends the reed and lily length,"

wherein the very spirit of summer seems to sway and droop. Yet it is
probable that no utter