Emerson's Poet

The poet as a ruler

"The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign and stands in the center" (224)

"Therefore, the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right." (224)

The poet as a prophet

"The signs and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold." (225)

"He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and causal." (225)

The poet as a doctor

"He is the true and only doctor." (225) What does Emerson mean by "doctor"?

The Poet as a Namer

"the poet is a Namer or Languagemaker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to everyone its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing in the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary." (231)

"So when the soul of a poet has come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and sends away from its poems or songs." (232)

"The poet also resigns himself to his mood and that thought which agitated him is expressed, but alter diem in a manner totally new." (232)

"The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or 'with the flower of of the mind'; not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect raised from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life..." (233)

"For poetry is not 'Devil's wine," but God's wine." (234)

"The imagination intoxicates the poet." (235)

"The poets are thus liberating gods." (236)

Emerson describes the bard as being inspired by things of this world and enjoy wine and what we might consider drugs.