ut at bottom "Poetry" is a most suspicious affair
for me at present! You cannot fancy the oceans of Twaddle that
human Creatures emit upon me, in these times; as if, when the
lines had a jingle in them, a Nothing could be Something, and the
point were gained! It is becoming a horror to me,--as all speech
without meaning more and more is. I said to Richard Milnes, "Now
in honesty what is the use of putting your accusative _before_
the verb, and otherwise entangling the syntax; if there really
is an image of any object, thought, or thing within you, for
God's sake let me have it the _shortest_ way, and I will so
cheerfully excuse the _omission_ of the jingle at the end:
cannot I do without that!"--Milnes answered, "Ah, my dear fellow,
it is because we have no thought, or almost none; a little
thought goes a great way when you put it into rhyme!" Let a man
try to the very uttermost to _speak_ what he means, before
_singing_ is had recourse to. Singing, in our curt English
speech, contrived expressly and almost exclusively for "despatch
of business," is terribly difficult. Alfred Tennyson, alone of
our time, has proved it to be possible in some measure. If
Channing will persist in melting such obdurate speech into music
he shall have my true wishes,--my augury that it will take an
enormous _heat_ from him!--Another Channing,* whom I once saw
here, sends me a Progress-of-the-Species Periodical from New
York. _Ach Gott!_ These people and their affairs seem all
"melting" rapidly enough, into thaw-slush or one knows not what.
Considerable madness is visible in them. _Stare super antiquas
vias:_ "No," they say, "we cannot stand, or walk, or do any good
whatever there; by God's blessing, we will fly,--will not you!--
here goes!" And their _flight,_ it is as the flight of the
unwinged,--of oxen endeavoring to fly with the "wings" of an ox!
By such flying, universally practised, the "ancient ways" are
really like to become very deep before long. In short, I am
terribly sick of all that;--and wish it would stay at home at
Fruitland, or where there is good pasture for it. Friend
Emerson, alone of all voices, out of America, has sphere-music in
him for me,--alone of them all hitherto; and is a prophecy and
sure dayspring in the East; immeasurably cheering to me. God
long prosper him; keep him duly apart from that bottomless
hubbub which is not, at all cheering! And so ends my Litany for
this day.

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