Emerson's Rhymes

Abstract

He was indifferent to the technical part of verse, but this was because of an incapacity or lack of gift for it; he was not careless, and his verse was brooded over, turned in his mind and re-wrought in his study; and what he published was generally the last and long deferred result of such power of expression as he was capable of; he was inartistic by necessity.... The technical quality of it is immaterial, and should be neglected and forgotten, as far as possible; its value lies in its original power of genius and owes little to the forms.4