Thoreau (p. 194) often enters Nature's mystic shrine and dilates with a sense of her companionship. Of the song of the wood thrush, he says:—
"Whenever a man hears it, he is young, and Nature is in her spring. Whenever he hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against him…. It changes all hours to an eternal morning. It banishes all trivialness. It reinstates me in my dominion, makes me the lord of creation, is chief musician of my court. This minstrel sings in a time, a heroic age, with which no event in the village can be contemporary."
Thoreau could converse with the Concord River and hear the sound of the rain in its "summer voice." Hiawatha talked with the reindeer, the beaver, and the rabbit, as with his brothers. In dealing with nature, Whittier caught something of Wordsworth's spirituality, and Lowell was impressed with the yearnings of a clod of earth as it
"Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers."
One of the chief glories of this age was the fuller recognition of the companionship that man bears to every child of nature. This phase of the literature has reacted on the ideals of the entire republic. Flowers, trees, birds, domestic animals, and helpless human beings have received more sympathetic treatment as a result. In what previous time have we heard an American poet ask, as Emerson did in his poem Forbearance (1842):—
"Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?"
[Illustration: MARGARET FULLER'S COTTAGE, BROOK FARM]
THE DIAL.—Transcendentalism had for its organ a magazine called The Dial, which was published quarterly for four years, from 1840 to 1844. Margaret Fuller, its first editor, was a woman of wide reading and varied culture, and she had all the enthusiasm of the Elizabethans. Carlyle said of her, "Such a predetermination to eat this big Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any human soul." She was determined to do her part in ushering in a new social and spiritual world, and it seemed to her that The Dial would be a mighty lever in accomplishing this result. She struggled for two years to make the magazine a success. Then ill health and poverty compelled her to turn the editorship over to Emerson, who continued the struggle for two years longer.
Some of Emerson's best poems were first published in The Dial, as were his lecture on The Transcendentalist and many other articles by him. Thoreau wrote for almost every number. Some of the articles were dull, not a few were vague, but many were an inspiration to the age, and their resultant effect is still felt in our life and literature. Much of the minor poetry was good and stimulating. William Channing (1818-1901) published in The Dial his Thoughts, in which we find lines that might serve as an epitaph for a life approved by a transcendentalist:—
"It flourished in pure willingness;
Discovered strongest earnestness;
Was fragrant for each lightest wind;
Was of its own particular kind;—
Nor knew a tone of discord sharp;
Breathed alway like a silver harp;
And went to immortality."