The deliverance of his thought is so perfect that this work adapts
itself to our mood and has the quality of poetry. This fluency Emerson
soon lost; it is the quality missing in his poetry. It is the
efflorescence of youth.
"In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing
a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky,
without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good
fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the
brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the
snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a
child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of
God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed,
and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand
years.... It is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not
to shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena, as
heat, water, azote; but to lead us to regard nature as phenomenon,
not a substance; to attribute necessary existence to spirit; to
esteem nature as an accident and an effect.
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