its content was shaped by his Romantic idealism. Thus his cumulative influence on American poetry is greater than his verse alone might imply.

Expression mattered more than form in poetry, according to Emerson. If he was not the completely inspirational poet called for in his essays, that may have been more a matter of temperament than of any flaw in his sense of the kind of poetry that a democratic culture would produce. In fact, his comments often closely parallel those of Alexis de Tocqueville on the nature of poetry in America. Both men agreed that the poetry of a democratic culture would embrace the facts of ordinary experience rather than celebrate epic themes. It would be a poetry of enumeration rather than elevation, of fact rather than eloquence; indeed, the democratic poet would have to struggle for eloquence, for poetry of the commonplace can easily become flat or prosaic. Even Emerson’s own best verse often seems uneven, with memorable lines interspersed with mediocre ones.

Part of the problem with Emerson’s poetry arose from his methods of composition. Writing poetry was not for him a smooth, continuous act of composition, nor did he have a set formula for composition, as Edgar Allan Poe advocated in “The Philosophy of Composition.” Instead, he trusted inspiration to allow the form of the poem to be determined by its subject matter. This “organic” theory of composition shapes many of Emerson’s best poems, including “The Snow-Storm,” “Hamatraya,” “Days,” and “Ode.” These poems avoid a fixed metrical or stanzaic structure and allow the sense of each line to dictate its poetic form. Emerson clearly composed by the line rather than by the stanza or paragraph, in both his poetry and prose, and this self-contained quality often gives his work a gnomic or orphic tone.

Although some of his poems appear to be fragmentary, they are not unfinished. They lack smoothness or polish because Emerson was not a lyrical but a visionary, oracular poet. He valued poetry as a philosophy or attitude toward life rather than simply as a formal linguistic structure or an artistic form. “The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty,” he observed in “The Poet.” With Percy Bysshe Shelley he believed that the poet was the visionary who would make people whole and teach them to see anew. “Poets are thus liberating gods,” Emerson concluded, because “they are free, and they make free.” Poetry is simply the most concentrated expression of the poetic vision, which all people are capable of sharing.

Thus Emerson’s poems seek to accomplish what the essays announce. His poems attempt to reestablish the primal relationship between humans and nature that he sought as a substitute for revelation. Emerson prized the poet as an innovator, a namer, and a language maker who could interpret the oracles of nature. In its derivation from nature, all language, he felt, was fossil poetry. “Always the seer is a sayer,” he announced in his Harvard Divinity School address, and through the vision of the poet “we come to look at the world with new eyes.”

Of the defects in Emerson’s poetry, the chief is perhaps that Emerson’s muse sees rather than sings. Because his lines are orphic and self-contained, they sometimes seem flat and discontinuous. Individual lines stand out in otherwise undistinguished poems. Nor do his lines always scan or flow smoothly, since Emerson was virtually tone-deaf. In “The Poet,” he rejects fixed poetic form in favor of a freer, more open verse. For Emerson, democratic poetry would be composed with variable line and meter, with form subordinated to expression. The poet in a democracy is thus a “representative man,” chanting the poetry of the common, the ordinary, and the low. Although Emerson pointed the way, it took Walt Whitman to master this new style of American poetry with his first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), which Emerson promptly recognized and praised for its originality. Whitman thus became the poet whom Emerson had called for in The American Scholar; American poetry had come of age.

• Friendship – The essay is frequently, but not always, preceded by an untitled poem by Emerson:
  

  A ruddy drop of manly blood
  The surging sea outweighs;
  The world uncertain comes and goes,
  The lover rooted stays.
  I fancied he was fled,
  And, after many a year,
  Glowed unexhausted kindliness
  Like daily sunrise there.
  My careful heart was free again,—
  O friend, my bosom said,
  Through thee alone the sky is arched,
  Through thee the rose is red,
  All things through thee take nobler form
  And look beyond the earth,
  The mill-round of our fate appears
  A sun-path in thy worth.
  Me too thy nobleness has taught
  To master my despair;
  The fountains of my hidden life
  Are through thy friendship fair.

• maugre – [archaic] in spite of
• benevolence – goodwill
• complacency – contentedness
• nimblest – the quickest and most agile
• misapprehension – a misconception or misunderstanding
• metamorphosed – transformed
• ennuis – feelings of boredom or depression
• unsought – without being looked for
• affinity – a liking
• connives – pretends to be ignorant of; conspires
• Apollo – the Greek god of the sun, poetry, light, music, and truth, and others; he was the son of Zeus and often has “Phoebus” attached to his name.
• Muses – In mythology, the muses are nine sisters, daughters of Zeus, who inspire creativity in poetry, music, art, and other disciplines. They are: Clio (history), Urania (astronomy), Thalia (comedy), Melpomene (tragedy), Erato (love poetry), Polyhymnia (song), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Terpsichore (dance), and Calliope (epic poetry).
• systole – the contraction of the heart; opposite of diastole
• diastole – the relaxation of the heart; opposite of systole
• metaphysical – supernatural; not perceivable by the senses
• Elysian – heavenly; Elysium was the region of the Greek underworld reserved for heroes.
• apprehension – the ability to be understood
• chaplets – a garland of leaves worn on the head
• festoons – decorative drapings of leaves or flowers
• reveries – rhapsodies; pleasant considerations
• tantamount – almost the same as
• effigy – an imitation or likeness
• superinduces – [archaic] brings on in addition
• environs – surrounds
• indulged – allowed; given in to
• apathies – lapses of caring or concern
• epilepsies – seizures or spasms
• rebuked – criticized; chastised
• naturlangsamkeit – [German] “the natural slowness of time”; Emerson may have coined the word.
• Alps – a major European mountain range
• Andes – a mountain range in South America
• audacious – bold
• bower – a temporary structure covered with leaves and flowers
• intrinsic – natural; native
• dissimulation – deception
• diadems – crowns, jewels
• parry – to ward off
• philanthropy – a love of humankind; charitable acts
• paradox – something that contradicts itself
• lucre – money or profit
• sutler – [archaic] someone who sells small goods to soldiers
• substantiate – to make real; give substance to
• municipal – relating to local society or government
• prostitution – cheap, frequent use
• modish – stylish; fashionable
• amity – friendship; peaceful relations
• frivolous – trivial; silly
• curricle – a two-wheeled carriage drawn by horses
• sallies – jokes, quips, or jests
• consummation – the ultimate goal
• latent – dormant; potential
• evanescent – like a vapor; vanishing
• piques – excites or stirs up
• antagonism – hostility
• nettle – a thorn
• confounding – ruining; confusing
• desecrate – to violate or destroy the sacredness of
• profane – low; earthly and trivial
• mien – the facial expression
• Crimen…aequat – [Latin] “Those whom crime pollutes, it makes equal.”
• vitiates – corrupts or debases
• consuetudes – customs
• nonage – immaturity
• Janus-faced – Janus, the Roman god of gates, doorways, beginnings, and endings, is usually depicted with two faces, each looking in an opposite direction.
• harbinger – an omen or predictor
• firmament – the sky
• languid – slow; not energetic
• capacious – able to receive or contain
• empyrean – relating to heaven
• unrequited – without having the same emotion returned
• deify – to worship as a god; to exalt