EMERSON 173 



and blown upon by a breeze from the highest heaven 

 of thought. In certain respects he has gone beyond 

 any other. He has gone beyond the symbol to the 

 thing signified. He has emptied poetic forms of 

 their meaning and made poetry of that. He would 

 fain cut the world up into stars to shine in the 

 intellectual firmament. He is more and he is less 

 than the best. 



He stands among other poets like a pine-tree amid 

 a forest of oak and maple. He seems to belong to 

 another race, and to other climes and conditions. 

 He is great in one direction, up; no dancing leaves, 

 but rapt needles; never abandonment, never a toss- 

 ing and careering, never an avalanche of emotion; 

 the same in sun and snow, scattering his cones, and 

 with night and obscurity amid his branches. He 

 is moral first and last, and it is through his impas- 

 sioned and poetic treatment of the moral law that 

 he gains such an ascendency over his reader. He 

 says, as for other things he makes poetry of them, 

 but the moral law makes poetry of him. He sees 

 in the world only the ethical, but he sees it through 

 the aesthetic faculty. Hence his page has the double 

 charm of the beautiful and the good. 



One of the penalties Emerson pays for his sharp 

 decision, his mental pertinence and resistance, is 

 the curtailment of his field of vision and enjoyment. 

 He is one ofthose men whom the gods drive with 

 blinders on, so that they see fiercely in only a few 



