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  • One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.123, Harvard University Press