"The true poet is the man of his time who is most alive, who feels, sees, and knows the most. In the measure of his life he is the greatest man of his age and country. His eye sees farther and more clearly; his heart beats more warmly and with a more universal sympathy; his thought runs deeper and with a swifter current, than is the case with other men. He is the oracle and guide, the inspirer and the friend, of those to whom he sings. He creates life under the ribs of dead tradition; he illumines the present with heart flames of beaconing truth, and he makes the future seem like home joys far off, but drawing ever nigher. The poet is the world's lover." Emerson found the Greeks standing as close to nature and truth as himself ("Essay on History"):-- "The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all old literature, is, that the persons speak simply,--speak as persons who have great good sense without knowing it, before yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit of the mind. Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective, but perfect in their senses and in their health, with the finest physical organization in the world. Adults acted with the simplicity and grace of children." In his "Defence of Poetry" Shelley says:-- "Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and, veiling them or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." Carlyle, in his "Heroes and Hero-worship," portrays the deeper art and insight of the poet thus:--