Letters and Social Aims (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Published in 1876, this collection was shepherded into print by Emerson''s daughter, Ellen Tucker Emerson, and his friend, James Elliot Cabot, due to Emerson''s diminished health.  But the essays themselves, especially the masterful "Poetry and the Imagination," a ringing defense of the symbolic power of poetry, belie the notion of any decline.