The Poems, vol 2 | Page 6

through sympathetic emotion--the emotion
of the deeply-stirred spectator, of the artist, the poet who lives in the
lives of others, and makes their joys and their sorrows his own.
Before dismissing this volume we may point out another clue as to the
shaping of mind and character. The poem of "Admetus" is dedicated
"to my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson." Emma Lazarus was between
seventeen and eighteen years of age when the writings of Emerson fell
into her hands, and it would be difficult to over-estimate the impression
produced upon her. As she afterwards wrote: "To how many thousand
youthful hearts has not his word been the beacon--nay, more, the
guiding star--that led them safely through periods of mental storm and

struggle!" Of no one is this more true than herself. Left, to a certain
extent, without compass or guide, without any positive or effective
religious training, this was the first great moral revelation of her life.
We can easily realize the chaos and ferment of an over-stimulated brain,
steeped in romantic literature, and given over to the wayward leadings
of the imagination. Who can tell what is true, what is false, in a world
where fantasy is as real as fact? Emerson's word fell like truth itself, "a
shaft of light shot from the zenith," a golden rule of thought and action.
His books were bread and wine to her, and she absorbed them into her
very being. She felt herself invincibly drawn to the master, "that fount
of wisdom and goodness," and it was her great privilege during these
years to be brought into personal relations with him. From the first he
showed her a marked interest and sympathy, which became for her one
of the most valued possessions of her life. He criticised her work with
the fine appreciation and discrimination that made him quick to discern
the quality of her talent as well as of her personality, and he was no
doubt attracted by her almost transparent sincerity and singleness of
soul, as well as by the simplicity and modesty that would have been
unusual even in a person not gifted. He constituted himself, in a way,
her literary mentor, advised her as to the books she should read and the
attitude of mind she should cultivate. For some years he corresponded
with her very faithfully; his letters are full of noble and characteristic
utterances, and give evidence of a warm regard that in itself was a
stimulus and a high incentive. But encouragement even from so
illustrious a source failed to elate the young poetess, or even to give her
a due sense of the importance and value of her work, or the dignity of
her vocation. We have already alluded to her modesty in her
unwillingness to assert herself or claim any prerogative,--something
even morbid and exaggerated, which we know not how to define,
whether as oversensitiveness or indifference. Once finished, the heat
and glow of
composition spent, her writings apparently ceased to
interest her. She often resented any allusion to them on the part of
intimate friends, and the public verdict as to their excellence could not
reassure or satisfy her. The explanation is not far, perhaps, to seek. Was
it not the "Ewig-Weibliche" that allows no prestige but its own? Emma
Lazarus was a true woman, too distinctly feminine to wish to be
exceptional, or to stand alone and apart, even by virtue of superiority.

A word now as to her life and surroundings. She was one of a family of
seven, and her parents were both living. Her winters were passed in
New York, and her summers by the sea. In both places her life was
essentially quiet and retired. The success of her book had been mainly
in the world of letters. In no wise tricked out to catch the public eye,
her writings had not yet made her a conspicuous figure, but were
destined slowly to take their proper place and give her the rank that she
afterwards held.
For some years now almost everything that she wrote was published in
"Lippincott's Magazine," then edited by John Foster Kirk, and we shall
still find in her poems the method and movement of her life. Nature is
still the fount and mirror, reflecting, and again reflected, in the soul.
We have picture after picture, almost to satiety, until we grow
conscious of a lack of substance and body and of vital play to the
thought, as though the brain were spending itself in dreamings and
reverie, the heart feeding upon itself, and the life choked by its own
fullness without due outlet. Happily, however, the heavy cloud of
sadness has lifted, and we feel the subsidence of waves after a storm.
She sings "Matins:"--