should be set on a key so low that the common
influences should delight him. His cheerfulness should
be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice
for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water.
That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to
come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass,
from every pine-stump and half-imbedded stone on which
the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and
hungry, and such as are of simple taste. If thou fill
thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and
covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with
wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of
wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods.

If the imagination intoxicates the poet, it is
not inactive in other men. The metamorphosis
excites in the beholder an emotion of joy. The
use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation
and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched
by a wand which makes us dance and run about happily,
like children. We are like persons who come out of
a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the
effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all
poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods. Men
have really got a new sense, and found within their
world another world, or nest of worlds; for, the
metamorphosis once seen, we divine that it does not
stop. I will not now consider how much this makes
the charm of algebra and the mathematics, which
also have their tropes, but it is felt in every