Emerson wrote to the girl whom he afterwards married: “I am born a poet,—of a low class without doubt, but a poet.... My singing, to be sure, is very husky and is for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmonies that are in the soul and in matter, and specially of the correspondence between them.” This is penetrating self-criticism. That he was “of a low class” as poet is more than doubtful,—an error of modesty. But that his singing was often “husky” cannot be denied. He never troubled himself to learn the art of song. The music of verse, in which Longfellow gained such mastery, and Lowell and Whittier had such native gifts, is not often found in Emerson’s poetry. His measures rarely flow with freedom and harmony. They are alternately stiff and spasmodic, and the rhymes are sometimes threadbare, sometimes eccentric. Many of his poems are so condensed, so tight-packed with thought and information that they seem to labour along like an overladen boat in a choppy sea. For example, this: “The journeying atoms, Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive, By their animate poles.” Or this: “Puny man and scentless rose Tormenting Pan to double the dose.” But for these defects of form Emerson as poet makes ample amends by the richness and accuracy of his observation of nature, by the vigorous flight of his imagination, by the depth and at times the passionate controlled intensity of his feeling. Of love-poetry he has none, except the philosophical. Of narrative poetry he has practically none, unless you count such brief, vivid touches as,— “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.” But his descriptive pieces are of a rare beauty and charm, truthful in broad outline and delicate detail, every flower and every bird in its right colour and place. Walking with him you see and breathe New England in the light of early morn, with the dew sparkling on the grass and all the cosmic forces working underneath it. His reflective and symbolic poems, like _Each and All_, _The Problem_, _Forerunners_, _Days_, _The Sphinx_, are full of a searching and daring imaginative power. He has also the genius of the perfect phrase. “The frolic architecture of the snow.” “Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone” “The silent organ loudest chants The Master’s requiem.” “Music pours on mortals Its beautiful disdain.” “Over the winter glaciers, I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snowdrift The warm rose-buds below.” “I thenceforward and long after, Listen for their harp-like laughter, And carry in my heart, for days, Peace that hallows rudest ways.”