Shelley, beloved! the year has a new name from any thou knowest.
When Spring arrives, leaves that you never saw will shadow the
ground, and flowers you never beheld will star it, and the grass
will be of another growth. Thy name is added to the list which
makes the earth bold in her age, and proud of what has been.
Time, with slow, but unwearied feet, guides her to the goal that
thou hast reached; and I, her unhappy child, am advanced still
nearer the hour when my earthly dress shall repose near thine,
beneath the tomb of Cestius.
--_Journal of Mary Shelley_
[Illustration: MARY SHELLEY]
When Emerson borrowed from Wordsworth that fine phrase about plain living
and high thinking, no one was more astonished than he that Whitman and
Thoreau should take him at his word. He was decidedly curious about their
experiment. But he kept a safe distance between himself and the
shirt-sleeved Walt; and as for Henry Thoreau--bless me! Emerson regarded
him only as a fine savage, and told him so. Of course, Emerson loved
solitude, but it was the solitude of a library or an orchard, and not the
solitude of plain or wilderness. Emerson looked upon Beautiful Truth as an
honored guest. He adored her, but it was with the adoration of the
intellect. He never got her tag in jolly chase of comradery; nor did he
converse with her, soft and low, when only the moon peeked out from behind
the silvery clouds, and the nightingale listened. He never laid himself
open to damages. And when he threw a bit of a bomb into Harvard Divinity
School it was the shrewdest bid for fame that ever preacher made.