His steps were slow, yet forward still

He pressed where others paused or failed; The calm star clomb' with constant will, The restless meteor flashed and paled!

Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew
And owned the higher ends of Law;
Still rose majestic on his view

The awful Shape the schoolman saw.

Her home the heart of God; her voice
The choral harmonies whereby
The stars, through all their spheres, rejoice,
The rhythmic rule of earth and sky!

We saw his great powers misapplied

To poor ambitions; yet, through all,

We saw him take the weaker side,

And right the wronged, and free the thrall.

Now, looking o'er the frozen North
For one like him in word and act,

To call her old, free spirit forth,

And give her faith the life of fact,—

To break her party bonds of shame,
And labor with the zeal of him
To make the Democratic name

Of Liberty the synonym,—

1 Clomb, past of climb; not good in prose.

We sweep the land from hill to strand,
We seek the strong, the wise, the brave,
And, sad of heart, return to stand
In silence by a new-made grave!

There, where his breezy hills of home
Look out upon his sail-white seas,
The sounds of winds and waters come,
And shape themselves to words like these:

"Why, murmuring, mourn that he, whose power
Was lent to Party over long,
Heard the still whisper at the hour
He set his foot on Party wrong?

"The human life that closed so well
No lapse of folly now can stain;
The lips whence Freedom's protest fell
No meaner thought can now profane.

"Mightier than living voice his grave
That lofty protest utters o'er;
Through roaring wind and smiting wave
It speaks his hate of wrong once more.

"Men of the North! your weak regret
Is wasted here; arise and pay
To freedom and to him your debt,
By following where he led the way!"

The poetry of Emerson is to most persons hard to understand; certainly so under conditions of mere surface reading. Yet, to understand it, takes a method neither long nor difficult. Two things only are requisite. To know Emerson's biography is indispensable; and as appreciation of prose is easier than that of poetry and prepares the way for the latter, a reader, to discriminate in and to understand these poems, should acquaint himself with Emerson's essays.

Originally written and delivered as lectures, Emerson's prose writings find a counterpart in the wellknown poems written to be recited, such as the Concord Hymn, the Concord Ode, and the Boston Hymn, which, being composed rhetorically, are not Emerson's best poems. The contemplative poem, Voluntaries, on the other hand, making universal application of a public subject, is indisputably of a high order. The idea of a just destiny behind the state is here expounded with the spiritual force that Emerson so much aspired to wield.

Other poems of Emerson's are autobiographical, sketching, as will be seen later, his inner history.

Outwardly his life was in the main quiet and uneventful. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, on Summer Street, then in a suburban district. His ancestry included several New England ministers of more or less eminence. From earliest boyhood Emerson grew up under influence favorable to study. Morally he was constantly and strongly influenced by his aunt, Miss Mary Emerson, a serious woman, thoughtfully interested in her nephew. In 1817 Emerson entered Harvard College, where he seems not to have been remarkable in general as a scholar, and only barely so in composition. Yet he read (more for himself than for his professors) a good deal in the literature not only of the day but of earlier times. After graduation he taught for a number of years and later preached, resigning his charge in 1832 and sailing for Europe, where he remained about a year. On his return he began his lecturing, and from 1835 resided in Concord until his death, April 27, 1882.

As illustrating Emerson's biography, Good-bye, Proud World, Berrying, and Terminus are of slight and incidental value. The poet as a lover writes To Ellen, To Eva, The Amulet, and Thine Eyes Still Shined. Only sad, serious subjects, however, called out his richest, fullest power, as in the Dirge and Threnody. The development of his character as a whole is reflected in other poems, also in his journal and in his letters. All these data are valuable as showing the stages of growth in the mind of a man of letters. In his attitude towards himself, at twenty-one, he shows an inquiring spirit, a conscious

ness of his own defects, and a distrust of his ability. Next, in the series of little pieces entitled Nature and Life, and constituting a further deliberation, he begins consciously high resolve and advances toward nobler and nobler self-possession. The course of these years is one of the most beautiful tales, though fragmentary, of the spiritualizing of a soul. Afterwards, in his voyage to Europe, his notes at sea are in a new style, the lightness and the loveliness of his prose beginning to come forth. Europe gave him more than it gives to many; if it did not furnish Emerson's inspiration, it prepared him to receive it.

Not long after his return Emerson wrote the greater part of his poems and essays, and then it was that the woods and waters of New England began to supply him with his imagery and embellishments. Indeed, it is almost necessary to be a New Englander in order to understand him; and to New Englanders his poems on nature have appealed strongly. He combines the sharp observation of the naturalist with the reverie of the artist and the idealist. His love of nature increasing as he grew older, he wrote more and with greater pains in this direction. The poem, May-Day, has parts in it in which Emerson is almost as attentive to finish of style as Milton is in his Comus. Both in Emerson's first and in his second volume hardly a poem on nature can be found but has its distinct excellence of sentiment or description. The melody of the Humble-Bee, the dainty picture of the Titmouse, the grandeur and the terraces of Seashore, and Monadnoc, the airy citadel, are not unusually striking by their