The Poets Poet | Page 3

for
God.--The occasional orthodox poet.
VII. THE PRAGMATIC ISSUE
The poet's alleged uselessness,--His effeminacy.--His virility.--The
poet warrior.--Incompatibility of poets and materialists.--Plato'scharge
that poetry is inferior to actual life.--The concurrence of certain soldier
poets in Plato's charge.--Poetry as an amusement only.--The value of
faithful imitation.--The realists.--Poetry as a solace.--Poetry a reflection
of the ideal essence of things.--Love of beauty the poet's guide in
disentangling ideality from the accidents of things.--Beauty as
truth.--The poet as seer.--The quarrel with the philosopher.--The truth
of beauty vs. cold facts.--Proof of validity of the poet's truth.--His skill
as prophet.--The poet's mission as reformer.--His impatience with
practical reforms.--Belief in essential goodness of men, since beauty is
the essence of things.--Reform a matter of allowing all things to
express their essence.--Enthusiasm for liberty.--Denial of the war-poet's
charge.--Poets the authors of liberty.--Poets the real rulers of
mankind.--The world's appreciation of their importance.--Their
immortality.
VIII. A SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT
Denial that the views of poets on the poet are heterogeneous.--Poets'
identity of purpose in discussing poets.--Apparent contradictions in
views.-Apparent inconsistency in the thought of each poet.--The
two-fold interests of poets.--The poet as harmonizer of sensual and
spiritual.-- Balance of sense and spirit in the poetic
temperament.--Injustice to one element or the other in most literary
criticism.--Limitations of the poet's prose criticism.--Superiority of his
critical expressions in verse.--The poet's importance.--Poetry as a proof
of the idealistic philosophy.
INDEX

CHAPTER I.
THE EGOCENTRIC CIRCLE
Most of us, mere men that we are, find ourselves caught in some
entanglement of our mortal coil even before we have fairly embarked
upon the enterprise of thinking our case through. The art of
self-reflection which appeals to us as so eminent and so human, is it
after all much more than a vaporous vanity? We name its subject
"human nature"; we give it a raiment of timeless generalities; but in the
end the show of thought discloses little beyond the obstreperous bit of a
"me" which has blown all the fume. The "psychologist's fallacy," or
again the "egocentric predicament" of the philosopher of the Absolute,
these are but tagged examples of a type of futile self-return (we name it
"discovery" to save our faces) which comes more or less to men of all
kinds when they take honest-eyed measure of the consequences of their
own valuations of themselves. We pose for the portrait; we admire the
Lion; but we have only to turn our heads to catch-glimpse Punch with
thumb to nose. And then, of course, we mock our own humiliation,
which is another kind of vanity; and, having done this penance, pursue
again our self-returning fate. The theme is, after all, one we cannot drop;
it is the mortal coil.
In the moment of our revulsion from the inevitable return upon itself of
the human reason, many of us have clung with the greater desperation
to the hope offered by poetry. By the way of intuition poets promise to
carry us beyond the boundary of the vicious circle. When the ceaseless
round of the real world has come to nauseate us, they assure us that by
simply relaxing our hold upon actuality we may escape from the
squirrel-cage. By consenting to the prohibition, "Bold lover, never,
never canst thou kiss!" we may enter the realm of ideality, where our
dizzy brains grow steady, and our pulses are calmed, as we gaze upon
the quietude of transcendent beauty.
But what are we to say when, on opening almost any book of
comparatively recent verse, we find, not the self-forgetfulness attendant
upon an ineffable vision, but advertisement of the author's importance?
His argument we find running somewhat as follows: "I am superior to

you because I write poetry. What do I write poetry about? Why, about
my superiority, of course!" Must we not conclude that the poet, with
the rest of us, is speeding around the hippodrome of his own
self-centered consciousness?
Indeed the poet's circle is likely to appear to us even more viciousthan
that of other men. To be sure, we remember Sir Philip Sidney's
contention, supported by his anecdote of the loquacious horseman, that
men of all callings are equally disposed to vaunt themselves. If the poet
seems especially voluble about his merits, this may be owing to the fact
that, words being the tools of his trade, he is more apt than other men in
giving expression to his self-importance. But our specific objection to
the poet is not met by this explanation. Even the horseman does not
expect panegyrics of his profession to take the place of horseshoes. The
inventor does not issue an autobiography in lieu of a new invention.
The public would seem justified in reminding the poet that, having a
reasonable amount of curiosity about human nature, it will eagerly
devour the poet's biography, properly labeled, but only after he has
forgotten