74 . BIRDS AND POETS 
directions. Supreme lover as he is of poetry, — 
Herrick’s poetry, — yet from the whole domain of 
what may be called emotional poetry, the poetry ° 
of fluid humanity, tallied by music, he seems to be 
shut out. This may be seen by his reference to 
Shelley in his last book, ‘‘ Letters and Social Aims,” 
and by his preference of the metaphysical poet 
throughout his writings. Wordsworth’s famous 
“Ode” is, he says, the high-water mark of English 
literature. What he seems to value most in Shake- 
speare is the marvelous wit, the pregnant sayings. 
He finds no poet in France, and in his “English 
Traits’ credits Tennyson with little but melody and 
color. (In our last readings, do we not surely come 
to feel the manly and robust fibre beneath Tenny- 
son’s silken vestments?) He demands of poetry 
that it be a kind of spiritual manna, and is at last 
forced to confess that there are no poets, and that 
when such angels do appear Homer and Milton will 
be tin pans. 
One feels that this will not do, and that health, 
and wholeness, and the well-being of man, are more 
in the keeping of Shakespeare than in the hands of 
Zoroaster or any of the saints. I doubt if that rare- 
fied air will make good red blood and plenty of it. 
But Emerson makes his point plain, and is not 
indebted to any of his teachers for it. It is the 
burden of all he writes upon the subject. The long 
discourse that opens his last volume! has numerous 
gub-headings, as “Poetry,” “‘Imagination,” ‘Crea- 
1 Letters and Social Aims. 
