Emerson is not wilfully obscure. But he comes dangerously near to being so in the demand he often makes upon his readers for out-of-the-way knowledge. 'Casella' is the title of an Emersonian quatrain,-- "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." The reference is to Dante's friend Casella ("Casella mio"), whom he meets in Purgatory, and who sweetly sings (as of yore on earth he was wont) a canzone by Dante himself,--"_Amor, che nella mente mi ragiona_." Emerson's favorite poet, Milton, in his sonnet to Henry Lawes, alludes, as Mr. Norton points out, to this friendship:-- "Dante shall give fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." The title [Greek: adakrun nemontai aiona] is from Pindar, I believe. Emerson took it from _The Dial_, where (July, '43) it appears as the motto to a poem by Charles A. Dana on 'Manhood.' It means, literally, "They pass a tearless life"; or, very freely rendered, "They live a life of smiles,"--a sentiment explained by the first lines,-- "A new commandment, said the smiling Muse, I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach." Even in so slight a matter as choosing a name for his verses 'To Rhea,' Emerson's philosophical belief is glimpsed; for Rhea was the mother of gods, and such he believed all women to be. The thought of this remarkable poem, which its author feigns to have received from the thousand chattering tongues of the poplar-tree, is extremely subtle and somewhat difficult to formulate. The analysis is this. If you, a wife, have lost your supremacy in your husband's affections, take a strange and noble revenge, not by hating, but, in a kind of calm altruistic despair, endowing him with all the gifts and blessings at your command. The poem is headed 'To Rhea' (Rhea being the wife of the cruel Saturn, who devoured his own children) as to a wife whose husband had merely "drank of Cupid's nectar cup," married her from sex-instinct alone, and then, the "bandages of purple light" fallen from "his eyes," treated her with indifference. But she continues to love him; and more the poet gives her the advice just noted, illustrating by the supposed case of a god loving a mortal maid, and warily knowing that she, with her inferior ideals, can never adequately requite his love, yet nobly endowing her with all gifts and graces, which are the hostages he pawns for freedom from "his thrall." He does this in an altruistic spirit, in order by her to "model newer races" and "carry man to new degrees of power and comeliness." But what thrall? We must walk warily here. In order not to seem to give his verses an autobiographical cast (although the god, the "wise Immortal," of them is really such a type as the seer