PRUDENCE
CIRCLES
Dr. Richard Garnett says in his Life of Emerson: "The object of this fine essay quaintly entitled Circles is to reconcile this rigidity of unalterable law with the fact of human progress. Compensation illustrates one property of a circle, which always returns to the point where it began, but it is no less true that around every circle another can be drawn.... Emerson followed his own counsel; he always keeps a reserve of power. His theory of Circles reappears without the least verbal indebtedness to himself in the splendid essay on Love."
"Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"
SAMUEL DANIEL.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?--
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.--EMERSON, _The Sphinx._
"See thou bring not to field or stone
The fancies found in books;
Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
To brave the landscape's look."--EMERSON,
_Waldeinsamkeit_.
