thorne—have written some of the best poetry of this generation in simple prose.[1]
The name of Poet was once a title of honour; it bids fair soon to be a title of ridicule. The form of Verse was at one period held to be the noblest possible kind of human utterance; but that form, remaining as it does in the swaddling-clothes of infant speech, will possibly be more or less abandoned as time rolls on by the thinkers and dreamers of the world. The word poetry may one day be identical with absurdity; and no one will jingle the cap and bells of rhyme but a fool. Is there no hope? Yes, a gleam. All the blundering and all the time-wasting in our literature have been caused by eternal posturing before the mirror. Each feeble talent has been so fascinated by his own image as to dwindle into an intellectual daisy or pine into a poetical primrose. Our literary shame has sprung from want of knowledge of how the world wags, of how men and women live and love, of what mighty forces are sweeping across the earth their angels' wings. Let the Sultan of Literature, if there be such a person (and if not, we might do worse than elect the functionary), issue forth an edict ordering the destruction of all looking-glasses, and the immediate silencing of all persons who introduce the subject of their own emotions. This would at least have the effect of driving our poets, if they must see themselves, to see themselves in flowing Rivers or the mighty Sea, and to wail aloud, if wail they must, to the four Winds of Heaven; and thus they might come in time to find how little account they themselves are
- ↑ "The French Revolution," "Les Misérables," "The Cloister and the Hearth," Emerson's first set of Essays, and "The Scarlet Letter"—all these works are "poems" in the noblest sense.
