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Under the heading "Morals" in his discourse on "Poetry and Imagination," he comes to the conclusion, entirely characteristic of him, that "Power, new power, is the good which the soul seeks." On this theme Emerson writes occasionally with a recklessness not often associated with the "Victorian" period in America. For power, he intimates in "Mithridates," a poet may perhaps well pay with his soul:

As a priest of the "being God, not the God that has been," Emerson finds that even the greatest of the old poets do not wholly content him. As a