ive." In Concord it
includes the objective and becomes subjective to nothing but freedom
and the absolute law. It is this underlying courage of the purest
humility that gives Emerson that outward aspect of serenity which is
felt to so great an extent in much of his work, especially in his codas
and perorations. And within this poised strength, we are conscious of
that "original authentic fire" which Emerson missed in Shelley--we are
conscious of something that is not dispassionate, something that is at
times almost turbulent--a kind of furious calm lying deeply in the
conviction of the eventual triumph of the soul and its union with God!

Let us place the transcendent Emerson where he, himself, places Milton,
in Wordsworth's apostrophe: "Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
so didst thou travel on life's common way in cheerful Godliness."

The Godliness of spiritual courage and hopefulness--these fathers of
faith rise to a glorified peace in the depth of his greater
perorations. There is an "oracle" at the beginning of the Fifth
Symphony--in those four notes lies one of Beethoven's greatest
messages. We would place its translation above the relentlessness of
fate knocking at the door, above the greater human-message of destiny,
and strive to bring it towards the spiritual message of Emerson's
revelations--even to the "common heart" of Concord--the Soul of
humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries, radiant in the
faith that it will be opened--and the human become the Divine!

III--Hawthorne

The substance of Hawthorne is so dripping wet with the supernatural,
the phantasmal, the mystical--so surcharged with adventures, from the
deeper picturesque to the illusive fantastic, one unconsciously finds
oneself thinking of him as a poet of greater imaginative impulse than
Emerson or Thoreau. He was not a greater poet possibly than they--but a
greater artist. Not only the character of his substance, but the care
in his manner throws his workmanship, in contrast to theirs, into a
kind of bas-relief. Like Poe he quite naturally and unconsciously
reaches out over his subject to his reader. His mesmerism seeks to
mesmerize us--beyond Zenobia's sister. But he is too great an artist to
show his hand "in getting his audience," as Poe and Tschaikowsky
occasionally do. His intellectual muscles are too strong to let him
become over-influenced, as Ravel and Stravinsky seem to be by the
morbidly fascinating--a