Emerson continues his discussion of the poet as the creator of the universe by arguing that "poetry was all written before time was . . ." He is not suggesting that every poem was written long ago, but that the recurring subject matter of poems — namely, our lives and the reasons for our being — existed since the beginning of time. Because our basic concerns of survival and our questioning why we exist influence each age, he can legitimately characterize the poet's writings as "primal warblings," present at time's beginning and shared by all of humanity. The person who mines this spiritualism is "the true poet," true in the sense of being fundamental and essential to our lives and our living.
Contrasting the true poet with the mere versifier, Emerson joins the age-old fray about which is more important, how a poem is written or what a poem is about, by arguing that content is only slightly more important than a poem's form for two reasons. If the thought that the poet is writing about "adorns nature with a new thing," then the form of the poem will naturally follow the content and will not feel contrived. Also, a poem's subject matter occurs prior to the form that a poem eventually takes: We cannot write poetry without first having a subject to write about. A person may be proficient in meter and rhyme but lack the inspiration and vision of the true poet, who is not tied to a single age or format, but who writes about nature's inner truths.
