On the other hand, one occasionally meets a point of view as opposite as that of Poe, who believed that the poet, no less than the philosopher, is governed by reason solely,—that the poetic imagination is a purely intellectual function. [Footnote: See the Southern Literary Messenger, II, 328, April, 1836.]
The philosopher could have no quarrel with him. Between the two extremes are the more thoughtful of the Victorian poets,—Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, whose taste leads them so largely to intellectual pursuits that it is difficult to say whether their principles of moral conduct arise from the poetical or the philosophical part of their natures.
The most profound utterances of poets on this subject, however, show them to be, not rationalists, but thoroughgoing Platonists. The feeling in which they trust is a Platonic intuition which includes the reason, but exists above it. At least this is the view of Shelley, and Shelley has, more largely than any other man, moulded the beliefs of later English poets. It is because he judges imaginative feeling to be always in harmony with the deepest truths perceived by the reason that he advertises his intention to purify men by awakening their feelings. Therefore, in his preface to The Revolt of Islam he says "I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue." in the preface to the Cenci, again, he declares, "Imagination is as the immortal God which should take flesh for the redemption of human passion."
The poet, while thus expressing absolute faith in the power of beauty to redeem the world, yet is obliged to take into account the Platonic distinction between the beautiful and the lover of the beautiful. [Footnote: Symposium, § 204.]
No man is pure poet, he admits, but in proportion as he approaches perfect artistry, his life is purified. Shelley is expressing the beliefs of practically all artists when he says, "The greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men; and the exceptions, as they regard those who possess the poetical faculty in a high, yet an inferior degree, will be found upon consideration to confirm, rather than to destroy, the rule." [Footnote: The Defense of Poetry.]
Sidney Lanier's verse expresses this argument of Shelley precisely. In The Crystal, Lanier indicates that the ideal poet has never been embodied. Pointing out the faults of his favorite poets, he contrasts their muddy characters with the perfect purity of Christ. And in Life and Song he repeats the same idea:
None of the singers ever yet
Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,
Or truly sung his true, true thought.
Philosophers may retort that this imperfection in the singer's life arises not merely from the inevitable difference between the lover and the beauty which he loves, but from the fact that the object of the poet's love is not really that highest beauty which is identical with the good. Poets are content with the "many beautiful," Plato charges, instead of pressing on to discover the "one beautiful," [Footnote: Republic, VI, 507B.]—that is, they are ravished by the beauty of the senses, rather than by the beauty of the ideal.
Possibly this is true. We have had, in recent verse, a sympathetic expression of the final step in Plato's ascent to absolute beauty, hence to absolute virtue. It is significant, however, that this verse is in the nature of a farewell to verse writing. In The Symbol Seduces, "A. E." exclaims,
I leave
For Beauty, Beauty's rarest flower,
For Truth, the lips that ne'er deceive;
For Love, I leave Love's haunted bower.