Ralph Waldo Emerson Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Elisabeth Luther Cary

Critical Essay by Elisabeth Luther Cary

SOURCE: "Poems," in Emerson: Poet and Thinker, G. P. Putman's Sons, 1904, pp. 205-20.

In this excerpt Cary, a professional journalist-biographer, praises Emerson's poetry, finding it equal to William Wordsworth's in its "moral purpose." To Cary, Emerson epitomizes America's mid-nineteenth century call for poets to fulfill an organic ideal of verse.

Emerson delayed until 1847 the first edition of his poems, "uncertain always," he wrote to his brother, whether he had "one true spark of that fire which burns in verse." It is not probable that to-day any critic of importance could be found to share his doubt. Whatever may be said of his prose there is one thing that must be said by all men of his poetry, that it is the expression of a poet. We may search for lines that do not scan, for endings that do not rhyme, for a metre that does not flow or...
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