From Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay *Self-Reliance* (1841). Select the word that fits the blank. "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the ______ of the firmament of bards and sages."

The sentence sets up a comparison between the inner *gleam* of one's own thought and the radiance of the canon ("the firmament of bards and sages"). The blank must therefore name a quality of *light* — to parallel "gleam." "Lustre" (a soft glow, brilliance) is the precise word and creates the metaphor's symmetry: inner gleam *vs.* outer lustre. - "Roar" shifts to sound, breaking the light metaphor. - "Weight" turns the figure into one of mass or authority, which works rhetorically but loses the *flashes across his mind* echo. - "Charm" is too soft and decorative for the firmament's high cultural authority. Emerson uses the astronomical metaphor (*firmament*, *lustre*) to dignify the rivals he is telling the reader to overlook — the contrast lands harder if the rivals are made to seem brilliant before being set aside.