This is noble stoicism. Among Emerson's poems are some which bear witness to a less noble spirit,—to a self-consciousness which rejoices in its contempt of the world; that knows itself to have enough, whilst the world perishes of hunger; a something which reminds one of the answer of the ant to the grasshopper, in La Fontaine's fable. But this shadow passes away, as do all clouds, from the clear heaven of the poet, having not there their abiding home. One strongly prominent feature in him is his love of the strong and the great. Thus he speaks in his poem, “The World-Soul:”—
“Thanks to the morning light,
Thanks to the seething sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free;
Thanks to each man of courage,
To the maids of holy mind,
To the boy with his games undaunted
Who never looks behind.”
But nobler even than this is the song of our Geijer:—
“I greet with love each field and grove,
And thou, blue billowy sea, I love;
Life-giving light in depth and height,
Thou heavenly sun, art my delight!
But more than all earth's fair array,
More than the blue waves dancing play,
Love I
The dawning light of heavenly rest
Within a trembling human breast!”
Of this light Emerson knows nothing. Emerson has,
in other respects, many points of resemblance with Geijer,
but he stands as much below him as heathenism stands
below Christianity.
I cannot, perhaps, do full justice to Emerson's poems by my translation; I never was very clever at translation; and I fancy it almost impossible to render the poetic element of Emerson into another tongue, because it is of
