Emerson's deep engagement with Coleridge's thought taught him to think – not what to think, but how to think. The previous chapters have investigated how Coleridge inspired Emerson to find his own “first philosophy,” and the essential role that his philosophical definitions, distinctions, and method played in structuring the early lectures. Although Coleridge and Emerson were deeply interested in philosophical modes of thinking, ultimately the medium of literature best expressed their dynamic mediations of the Romantic triad. Coleridge was a role model for Emerson, not only for his new vocation as a public lecturer and a man of letters, but for an even more elevated role: the poet-prophet. The poet-prophet was at the center of the Romantic triad, an especially gifted individual who could mediate the relationship of nature, spirit, and humanity in imaginative literary works. Both Coleridge and Emerson referred constantly to the figure of the poet throughout their careers, even though Coleridge had finished writing his most notable poems by 1802, and Emerson's poetry ultimately proved far less influential than his essays.

Emerson's early exposure to Coleridge's literary criticism was pivotal, especially his organic view of art as reconciling the natural and spiritual. In his 1818 lectures on literature, Coleridge made the following three statements: “Art is the Mediatress, the reconciliator of Man and Nature,” “Art is the Imitatress of Nature,” and finally “Art would or should be the Abridgment of Nature.”