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?
Ideas aren't real estate, they grow collectively and that knocks out the egotistical loneliness that generally infects art.
When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.
I never step upon a stage without asking myself whether I will succeed in finishing the opera. The fact is that a conscientious singer is never sure of himself or of anything. He is ever in the hands of Destiny.
Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.
Each time I make a movie, it's a little bit like taking another course in something because there's an argument between these people that I don't necessarily have an answer to.
With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.
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