ever showing it and Thoreau that he could not easily expose it.
They were equally imbued with it, but with different results. A
difference in temperament had something to do with this, together
with a difference in the quality of expression between the two
arts. "Who that has heard a strain of music feared lest he would
speak extravagantly forever," says Thoreau. Perhaps music is the
art of speaking extravagantly. Herbert Spencer says that some
men, as for instance Mozart, are so peculiarly sensitive to
emotion...that music is to them but a continuation not only of
the expression but of the actual emotion, though the theory of
some more modern thinkers in the philosophy of art doesn't always
bear this out. However, there is no doubt that in its nature
music is predominantly subjective and tends to subjective
expression, and poetry more objective tending to objective
expression. Hence the poet when his muse calls for a deeper
feeling must invert this order, and he may be reluctant to do so
as these depths often call for an intimate expression which the
physical looks of the words may repel. They tend to reveal the
nakedness of his soul rather than its warmth. It is not a matter
of the relative value of the aspiration, or a difference between
subconsciousness and consciousness but a difference in the arts
themselves; for example, a composer may not shrink from having
the public hear his "love letter in tones," while a poet may feel
sensitive about having everyone read his "letter in words." When
the object of the love is mankind the sensitiveness is changed
only in degree.

But the message of Thoreau, though his fervency may be inconstant
and his human appeal not always direct, is, both in thought and
spirit, as universal as that of any man who ever wrote or sang--