hat Emerson's poetry will outlive his
prose. The question is idle. The poems are alive now, and they may or
may not survive the race whose spirit they embody; but one thing is
plain: they have qualities which have preserved poetry in the past. They
are utterly indigenous and sincere. They are short. They represent a
civilization and a climate.

His verse divides itself into several classes. We have the single
lyrics, written somewhat in the style of the later seventeenth century.
Of these The Humble Bee is the most exquisite, and although its tone and
imagery can be traced to various well-known and dainty bits of poetry,
it is by no means an imitation, but a masterpiece of fine taste. The
Rhodora and Terminus and perhaps a few others belong to that class of
poetry which, like Abou Ben Adhem, is poetry because it is the
perfection of statement. The Boston Hymn, the Concord Ode, and the other
occasional pieces fall in another class, and do not seem to be
important. The first two lines of the Ode,

"O tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire."

are for their extraordinary beauty worthy of some mythical Greek, some
Simonides, some Sappho, but the rest of the lines are commonplace.
Throughout his poems there are good bits, happy and golden lines,
snatches of grace. He himself knew the quality of his poetry, and wrote
of it,

"All were sifted through and through,
Five lines lasted sound and true."

He is never merely conventional, and his poetry, like his prose, is
homespun and sound. But his ear was defective: his rhymes are crude, and
his verse is often lame and unmusical, a fault which can be
countervailed by nothing but force, and force he lacks. To say that his
ear was defective is hardly strong enough. Passages are not uncommon
which hurt the reader and unfit him to proceed; as, for example:--

"Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame:
'Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am.'"

He himself has very well described the impression his verse is apt to
make on a new reader when he says,--

"Poetry must not freeze, but flow."

The lovers of Emerson's poems freely acknowledge all these defects, but
find in them another element, very subtle and rare, very refined and
elusive, if not altogether unique. This is the mystical element or
strain which qualifies many of his poems, and to which some of them are
wholly devoted.

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