He studied epic poetry and was invited to lecture on the topic in his home town, which drew the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Soon after, Very asserted that he was the Second Coming of Christ, which resulted in his dismissal from Harvard and his eventual institutionalization in an insane asylum.

His father died on the return trip,[3] apparently due to a lung disease he contracted while in Nova Scotia.

After working at an auction house,[8] Very became a paid assistant to the principal of a private school in Salem as a teenager.

The principal, Henry Kemble Oliver, exposed his young assistant to philosophers and writers, including James Mackintosh, influencing his religious beliefs and counteracting his mother's atheism.

[9] He composed a poem for the dedication of a new Unitarian church in Salem: "O God; On this, our temple, rest thy smile, Till bent with days its tower shall nod".

He had become interested in the works of Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.

[11] After graduating, Very served as a tutor in Greek, then entered Harvard Divinity School,[2] with the financial assistance of an uncle.

There he was befriended by Elizabeth Peabody, who wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson suggesting Very lecture in Concord.

[2] Very lectured on epic poetry on April 4 of that year, after he had walked 20 miles from Salem to Concord to deliver it.

[16] Even so, in May 1838, the same month Very published his "Epic Poetry" lecture in the Christian Examiner, Emerson brought Very to a meeting of the Transcendental Club, where the topic of discussion was "the question of mysticism".

[17] At the meeting, held at the home of Caleb Stetson in Medford, Massachusetts, Very was engaged in the discussion, building his reputation as a mystic within that circle.

[20] In August 1837, while traveling by train, he was overcome with terror at its speed until he realized he was being "borne along by a divine engine and undertaking his life-journey".

[4] One of Very's students, a fellow native of Salem named Samuel Johnson Jr., said that people ridiculed Very behind his back since he had "gained the fame of being cracked (or crazy, if you are not acquainted with Harvard technicalities)".

[24] After returning to Salem, he visited Elizabeth Peabody on September 16, 1838,[25] apparently having given up his rule "not to speak or look at women".

It struck me at once that there was something unnatural—and dangerous in his air—As soon as we were within the parlor door he laid his hand on my head—and said "I come to baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with Fire"—and then he prayed.

[27] Emerson was sympathetic with Very's plight because he recently had been ostracized after his controversial lecture the "Divinity School Address".

"[35] He never was read widely and was largely forgotten by the end of the 19th century, but in the 1830s and 1840s the Transcendentalists, including Emerson, as well as William Cullen Bryant, praised his work.

In his essay "Friendship", Emerson referred to Very: I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty.

It was my fortune to have known the man while he was tutor in Harvard College and writing his Sonnets and Essays on Shakespeare, which were edited by Emerson, and published in 1839.

Whether Emerson's witty reply "that the Spirit should be a better speller" qualified the mystic's vision does not appear otherwise than that the printed volume shows no traces of illiteracy in the text.

His temperament was delicate and nervous, disposed to visionariness and a dreamy idealism, stimulated by over-studies and the school of thought then in the ascendant.

[42]The first critical review of Very's book was written by Margaret Fuller and published in Orestes Brownson's Boston Quarterly Review; it said Very's poems had "an elasticity of spirit, a genuine flow of thought, and unsought nobleness and purity", but she admitted she preferred the prose in the collection over the poetry.

He wrote to Emerson asking for more information about him and expressing his opinion of his poetry: "Though comparatively unknown, he seems to be a true poet.

I am proposing the establishment of a third.”[48] Winters, in speaking of Very's relations with Emerson and his circle, concluded “The attitude of the Transcendentalists toward Very is instructive and amusing, and it proves beyond cavil how remote he was from them.

In respect to the doctrine of the submission of the will, he agreed with them in principle; but whereas they recommended the surrender, he practised it, and they regarded him with amazement.”[49] Subsequently, William Irving Bartlett, in 1942, outlined the basic biographical facts of Very's life in Jones Very, Emerson’s “Brave Saint.”[47] A complete scholarly edition of Very's poetic works belatedly appeared, over a century after the poet's death, in 1993.