The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain, or meadow of space, was strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the poet's unique ability to see deeper meanings in nature and existence, using them as symbols for expression.
Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the profound insight that poets possess, allowing them to perceive and interpret the world around them beyond mere facts. They recognize the greater significance behind elements of nature, like stars and animals, transforming these observations into powerful symbols that enrich their poetic expression. Emerson suggests that poets ride these elements as vehicles for thought, illustrating how artists connect personal experience with universal truths.
In practice
In a lecture about the role of art in society, one might quote Emerson to illustrate how poets perceive the world.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love.
As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.
This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.
When the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, I hate these people with the pins in their ears. I said, Thank God, something got their attention.
With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
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