Ralph Waldo Emerson Poetry Quotations

For this present, hard Is the fortune of the bard, Born out of time; All his accomplishment, From Nature's utmost treasure spent, Booteth not him.

There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.

Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.

For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable.

The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs.

And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.

We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.

Test of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove; Never was poet, of late or of yore, Who was not tremulous with love-lore.

Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

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, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.

Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

Every word was once a poem.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

Language is fossil Poetry.

The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .

The finest poetry was first experience.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.

The true poem is the poet's mind.