Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. R
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson
  5. Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it...

Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry, Mind, Sound
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.49, Harvard University Press
Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.