Essays, Second Series | Page 5

Homer's words are as costly
and admirable to Homer as Agamemnon's victories are to Agamemnon.
The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and
think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken,
reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him,
secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter,
or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so
finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is
music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down,
but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something
of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear
write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts,

though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as
truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much
appear as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite
indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and
actions are a kind of words.
The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which
no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he
is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the
appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer
of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of
poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I
took part in a conversation the other day concerning a recent writer of
lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a music-box of
delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill and command of language,
we could not sufficiently praise. But when the question arose whether
he was not only a lyrist but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is
plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man. He does not stand out of
our low limitations, like a Chimborazo under the line, running up from
the torrid Base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the
herbage of every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius
is the landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and
statues, with well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the
walks and terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the
ground-tone of conventional life. Our poets are men of talents who sing,
and not the children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of
the verses is primary.
For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a
poem,--a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or
an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a
new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but
in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a
new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us
how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For
the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the
world seems always waiting for its poet. I remember when I was young
how much I was moved one morning by tidings that genius had
appeared in a youth who sat near me at table. He had left his work and

gone rambling none knew whither, and had written hundreds of lines,
but could not tell whether that which was in him was therein told; he
could tell nothing but that all was changed,--man, beast, heaven, earth
and sea. How gladly we listened! how credulous! Society seemed to be
compromised. We sat in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all
the stars. Boston seemed to be at twice the distance it had the night
before, or was much farther than that. Rome,--what was Rome?
Plutarch and Shakspeare were in the yellow leaf, and Homer no more
should be heard of. It is much to know that poetry has been written this
very day, under this very roof, by your side. What! that wonderful spirit
has not expired! These stony moments are still sparkling and animated!
I had fancied that the oracles were all silent, and nature had spent her
fires; and behold! all night, from every pore, these fine auroras have
been streaming. Every one has some interest in the advent