...expressed more strongly, as one would expect, in The Poet than in any other of Emerson's writings. 'lt is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns,...on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things. ..by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate...

...unknown persons we might soon be. In "The Poet," the lecture that Whitman heard in 1842., Emerson said, "every intellectual man quickly learns that, beyond...conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy ... by abandonment to the nature of things." This instinct of metamorphosis, Emerson continued, was...

...consciousness." Emerson uses these thrilling words in describing this universal power from the cosmic: "It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his conscious and possessed intellect he is capable of a new energy by abandonment to the nature of things;...

...other words, the poet makes our birthright discoverable to us. Significantly, he can do this because beside "his privacy of power as an individual man,...draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors" (P 459). ("Public" here means something like "universal.") The poet is, therefore, a transformer: he...