Wilde and his lily down the street. When the poet is too proud to complain of his own wrongs at the hands of the public, it is easy for him to strike in defense of another. As the last century wore on, this vicarious indignation more and more took the place of a personal outcry. Comparatively little has been said by poets since the romantic period about their own persecutions.1 Occasionally a poet endeavors to placate the public by assuming a pose of equality. The tradition of Chaucer, fostered by the Canterbury Tales, is that by carefully hiding his genius, he succeeded in keeping on excellent terms with his contemporaries. Percy Mackaye, in the Canterbury Pilgrims, shows him obeying St. Paul's injunction so literally that the parson takes him for a brother of the cloth, the plowman is surprised that he can read, and so on, through the whole social gamut of the Pilgrims. But in the nineteenth century this friendly attitude seldom works out so well. Walt Whitman flaunts his ability to fraternize with the man of the street. But the American public has failed "to absorb him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." 2 Emerson tries to get on common ground with his audience by asserting that every man is a poet to some extent,3 and it is consistent with the poetic theory of Yeats that he makes the same assertion as Emerson: 1 See, however, Joaquin Miller, I Shall Remember, and Vale; Francis Ledwidge, The Visitation of Peace. By Blue Ontario's Shore. 'See The Enchanter. There cannot be confusion of sound forgot, But when the mob jeers at a poet, it does not take kindly to his retort, "Poet yourself." Longfellow, J. G. Holland and James Whitcombe Riley have been warmly commended by some of their brothers 2 for their promiscuous friendliness, but on the whole there is a tendency on the part of the public to sniff at these poets, as well as at those who commend them, because they make themselves so common. One may deride the public's inconsistency, yet, after all, we have not to read many pages of the "homely" poets before their professed ability to get down to the level of the "common man" begins to remind one of pre-campaign speeches. There seems to be nothing for the poet to do, then, but to accept the hostility of the world philosophically. There are a few notable examples of the poet even welcoming the solitude that society forces upon him, because it affords additional opportunity for self-communion. Everyone is familiar with Wordsworth's insistence that uncompanionableness is essential to the poet. In the Prelude he relates how, from early childhood, I was taught to feel, perhaps too much, 1 Pandeen. 'See O. W. Holmes, To Longfellow; P. H. Hayne, To Henry W. Longfellow; T. B. Read, A Leaf from the Past; E. C. Stedman, J. G. H.; P. L. Dunbar, James Whitcombe Riley; J. W. Riley, Rhymes of Ironquill. Elsewhere he disposes of the forms of social inter course: These all wear out of me, like Forms, with chalk Painted on rich men's floors, for one feast night.1 So he describes the poet's character: He is retired as noontide dew Or fountain in a noonday grove.2 In American verse Wordsworth's mood is, of course, reflected in Bryant, and it appears in the poetry of most of Bryant's contemporaries. Longfellow caused the poet to boast that he "had no friends, and needed none." Emerson expressed the same mood frankly. He takes civil leave of mankind: Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; To fetch his word to men.* He points out the idiosyncrasy of the poet: Men consort in camp and town, But the poet dwells alone.5 Thus he works up to his climactic statement regarding the amplitude of the poet's personality: I have no brothers and no peers Although the poet's egotism would seem logically to cause him to find his chief pleasure in undisturbed communion with himself, still this picture of the poet delighting in solitude cannot be said to follow, usually, upon his banishment from society. For the most part the poet is characterized by an insatiable yearning for affection, and by the stupidity and hostility of other men he is driven into proud loneliness, even while his heart thirsts for companionship.1 One of the most popular poet-heroes of the last century, asserting that he is in such an unhappy situation, yet declares: For me, I'd rather live With this weak human heart and yearning blood, Lonely as God, than mate with barren souls. More brave, more beautiful than myself must be The man whom I can truly call my friend." So the poet is limited to the companionship of rare souls, who make up to him for the indifference of all the world beside. Occasionally this compensation is found in romantic love, which flames all the brighter, because the affections that most people expend on many human relationships are by the poet turned upon one object. Apropos of the world's 'See John Clare, The Stranger, The Peasant Poet, I Am; James Gates Percival, The Bard; Joseph Rodman Drake, Brorix (1847); Thomas Buchanan Reade, My Heritage; Whittier, The Tent on the Beach; Mrs. Frances Gage, The Song of the Dreamer (1867); R. H. Stoddard, Utopia; Abram J. Ryan, Poets; Richard H. Dana, The Moss Supplicateth for the Poet; Frances Anne Kemble, The Fellowship of Genius (1889); F. S. Flint, Loneliness (1909); Lawrence Hope, My Paramour was Loneliness (1905); Sara Teasdale, Alone. Alexander Smith, A Life Drama. indifference to him, Shelley takes comfort in the assurance of such communion, saying to Mary, If men must rise and stamp with fury blind But though passion is so often the source of his inspiration, the poet's love affairs are seldom allowed to flourish. The only alleviation of his loneliness must be, then, in the friendship of unusually gifted and discerning men, usually of his own calling. Doubtless the ideal of most nineteenth century writers would be such a jolly fraternity of poets as Herrick has made immortal by his Lines to Ben Jonson.2 A good deal of nineteenth century verse shows the author enviously dwelling upon the ideal comradeship of Elizabethan poets. But multiple friendships did not flourish among poets of the last century,—at least they were overhung by no glamor of 'Introduction to The Revolt of Islam. 3 'The tradition of the lonely poet was in existence even at this time, however. See Ben Jonson, Essay on Donne. Keats' Lines on the Mermaid Tavern, Browning's At the Mermaid, Watts-Dunton's Christmas at the Mermaid, E. A. Robinson's Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford, Josephine Preston Peabody's Marlowe, and Alfred Noyes' Tales of the Mermaid Inn all present fondly imagined accounts of the gay intimacy of the master dramatists. Keats, who was so generous in acknowledging his indebtedness to contemporary artists, tells, in his epistles, of the envy he feels for men who created under these ideal conditions of comradeship. |