Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 May 1803
CountryUnited States of America
Language is fossil Poetry.
The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .
The finest poetry was first experience.
For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.
The true poem is the poet's mind.
For this present, hard Is the fortune of the bard, Born out of time; All his accomplishment, From Nature's utmost treasure spent, Booteth not him.
There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.
Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.
Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.
For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable.
The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs.
And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.
We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.
Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.