mpulses
of moral nature. The figs become grapes whilst he eats them. When
some of his angels affirmed a truth, the laurel twig which they held
blossomed in their hands. The noise which at a distance appeared like
gnashing and thumping, on coming nearer was found to be the voice of
disputants. The men in one of his visions, seen in heavenly light,
appeared like dragons, and seemed in darkness; but to each other they
appeared as men, and when the light from heaven shone into their cabin,
they complained of the darkness, and were compelled to shut the window
that they might see.

There was this perception in him which makes the poet or seer an object
of awe and terror, namely that the same man or society of men may wear
one aspect to themselves and their companions, and a different aspect to
higher intelligences. Certain priests, whom he describes as conversing
very learnedly together, appeared to the children who were at some
distance, like dead horses; and many the like misappearances. And
instantly the mind inquires whether these fishes under the bridge,
yonder oxen in the pasture, those dogs in the yard, are immutably
fishes, oxen, and dogs, or only so appear to me, and perchance to
themselves appear upright men; and whether I appear as a man to all
eyes. The Bramins and Pythagoras propounded the same question, and
if any poet has witnessed the transformation he doubtless found it
in harmony with various experiences. We have all seen changes as
considerable in wheat and caterpillars. He is the poet and shall draw us
with love and terror, who sees through the flowing vest the firm nature,
and can declare it.

I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not with sufficient
plainness or sufficient profoundness address ourselves to life, nor dare
we chaunt our own times and social circumstance. If we filled the day
with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature
yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the
reconciler, whom all things await. Dante's praise is that he dared to
write his autobiography in colossal cipher, or into universality. We
have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the
value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and
materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose
picture he so much admires in Homer; then in the Middle Age; then in
Calvinism. Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus,