Ralph Waldo Emerson Poetry Quotations

Only poetry inspires poetry.

Every word was once a poem.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

Poetry being ... when we look from the center outward.

Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me.

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.

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.

We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.

And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.

The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs.

For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable.

Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.

Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.

For this present, hard Is the fortune of the bard, Born out of time; All his accomplishment, From Nature's utmost treasure spent, Booteth not him.

Language is fossil Poetry.

The true poem is the poet's mind.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.

The finest poetry was first experience.

The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .