Although _Nature_ is written in prose, it is evident
that the author is a poet. He says:--
"How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me
health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and
unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the
senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of
mystic philosophy and dreams."
Emerson tried to make men feel that the beauty of the universe is the
property of every individual, but that the many divest themselves of their
heritage. When he undertook to tell Americans how to secure a warranty deed
to the beauties of nature, he specially emphasized the moral element in the
process. The student who fails to perceive that Emerson is one of the great
moral teachers has studied him to little purpose. To him all the processes
of nature "hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the
Ten Commandments." In _Nature_, he says:--
"All things with which we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a
mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight,
rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of
spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the
fields.
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