174 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 Prance, 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 

 sub-headings, as "Poetry," "Imagination," "Crea- 

 1 Letters and Social Aims, 



