SOURCE: A review of May-Day and Other Pieces, in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 20, September, 1867, pp. 376-78.

Howells, one of the most popular novelists of the late nineteenth century, was an editor of Atlantic Monthly for fifteen years. In this excerpt Howells praises selections from Emerson's second book of poetry and states that Emerson's poetry, while challenging, offers great intellectual rewards.

We wonder whether those who take up Mr. Emerson's poem now, amid the glories of the fading summer, are not giving the poet a fairer audience than those who hurried to hear his song in the presence of the May he celebrates. As long as spring was here, he had a rival in every reader; for then we all felt ourselves finer poets than ever sang of the season, and did not know that our virtue was but an effect of Spring herself,—an impression, not an expression of...