But I must not begin to quote Emerson's poetry; only it is worth noting that he, whose verse is uniformly so abstractly and intellectually beautiful, kindles to passion whenever his theme is of America. The loftiest patriotism never found more ardent and eloquent expression than in the hymn sung at the completion of the Concord monument, on the 19th of April, 1836. There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph; "the foe long since in silence slept"; but throughout there resounds a note of pure and deep rejoicing at the victory of justice over oppression, which Concord fight so aptly symbolized. In "Hamatreya" and "The Earth Song," another chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we too, he asks, we Yankee farmers, descendants of the men who gave up all for freedom, go back to the creed outworn of medieval feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of the land that yields us its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my name's"? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish boastfulness, and asks "How am I theirs if they cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I heard 'The Earth Song,' I was no longer brave; my avarice cooled, like lust in the child of the grave" Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the insight and the power with which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchman tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good for which we all our lifetime grope; and though the substance us elude, we in thee the shadow find." ... "Thou dost supply the shortness of our days, and promise, on thy Founder's truth, long morrow to this mortal youth!" I have ignored the versified form in these extracts, in order to bring them into more direct contrast with the writer's prose, and show that the poetry is inherent. No other poet, with whom I am acquainted, has caused the very spirit of a land, the mother of men, to express itself so adequately as Emerson has done in these pieces. Whitman falls short of them, it seems to me, though his effort is greater.