Most of these poems account for the premonitions of the poet as Shelley does; as a more recent poet has phrased it:
Strange hints
Of things past, present and to come there lie
Sealed in the magic pages of that music,
Which, laying hold on universal laws,
Ranges beyond these mud-walls of the flesh.
[Footnote: Alfred Noyes, Tales of the Mermaid Inn.]
The poet's defense is not finished when he establishes the truth of his vision. How shall the world be served, he is challenged, even though it be true that the poet's dreams are of reality? Plato demanded of his philosophers that they return to the cave of sense, after they had seen the heavenly vision, and free the slaves there. Is the poet willing to do this? It has been charged that he is not. Browning muses,
Ah, but to find
A certain mood enervate such a mind,
Counsel it slumber in the solitude
Thus reached, nor, stooping, task for mankind's good
Its nature just, as life and time accord.
—Too narrow an arena to reward
Emprize—the world's occasion worthless since
Not absolutely fitted to evince
Its mastery!
[Footnote: Sordello.]
But one is inclined to question the justice of Browning's charge, at least so far as it applies peculiarly to the poet. Logically, he should devote himself to sense-blinded humanity, not reluctantly, like the philosopher descending to a gloomy cave which is not his natural habitat, but eagerly, since the poet is dependent upon sense as well as spirit for his vision. "This is the privilege of beauty," says Plato, "that, being the loveliest of the ideas, she is also the most palpable to sight." [Footnote: Phaedrus.] Accordingly the poet has no horror of physical vision as a bondage, but he is fired with an enthusiasm to make the world of sense a more transparent medium of beauty. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with the poet's humanitarian aspect, see Bowles, The Visionary Boy, On the Death of the Rev. Benwell; Wordsworth, The Poet and the Caged Turtle Dove; Arnold, Heine's Grave; George Eliot, O May I Join the Choir Invisible; Lewis Morris, Food Of Song; George Meredith, Milton; Bulwer Lytton, Milton; James Thomson, B. V., Shelley; Swinburne, Centenary of Landor, Victor Hugo, Victor Hugo in 1877, Ben Jonson, Thomas Decker; Whittier, To J. P., and The Tent on the Beach; J. R. Lowell, To The Memory of Hood; O. W. Holmes, At a Meeting of the Burns Club; Emerson, Solution; R. Realf, Of Liberty and Charity; W. H. Burleigh, Shelley; T. L. Harris, Lyrics of the Golden Age; Eugene Field, Poet and King; C. W. Hubner, The Poet; J. H. West, O Story Teller Poet; Gerald Massey, To Hood Who Sang the Song of the Shirt; Bayard Taylor, A Friend's Greeting to Whittier; Sidney Lanier, Wagner, Clover; C. A. Pierce, The Poet's Ideal; E. Markham, The Bard, A Comrade Calling Back, An April Greeting; G. L. Raymond, A Life in Song; Richard Gilder, The City, The Dead Poet; E. L. Cox, The Master, Overture; R. C. Robbins, Wordsworth; Carl McDonald, A Poet's Epitaph.] It is inevitable that every poet's feeling for the world should be that of Shelley, who says to the spirit of beauty,
Never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery. [Footnote: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.] For, unlike the philosopher, the poet has never departed from the world of sense, and it is hallowed to him as the incarnation of beauty. Therefore he is eager to make other men ever more and more transparent embodiments of their true selves, in order that, gazing upon them, the poet may have ever deeper inspiration. This is the central allegory in Enydmion, that the poet must learn to help humanity before the mystery of poetship shall be unlocked to him. Browning comments to this effect upon Bordello's unwillingness to meet the world:
But all is changed the moment you descry
Mankind as half yourself.
Matthew Arnold is the sternest of modern poets, perhaps, in pointing out the poet's responsibility to humanity:
The poet, to whose mighty heart
Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,
Subdues that energy to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
Though he move mountains, though his day
Be passed on the proud heights of sway,
Though he hath loosed a thousand chains,
Though he hath borne immortal pains,
Action and suffering though he know,
He hath not lived, if he lives so.
[Footnote: Resignation.]
It is obvious that in the poet's opinion there is only one means by which he can help humanity, and that is by helping men to express their essential natures; in other words, by setting them free. Liberty is peculiarly the watch-word of the poets. To the philosopher and the moralist, on the contrary, there is no merit in liberty alone. Men must be free before they can seek wisdom or goodness, no doubt, but something beside freedom is needed, they feel, to make men good or evil. But to the poet, beauty and liberty are almost synonymous. If beauty is the heart of the universe (and it must be, the poet argues, since it abides in sense as well as spirit), there is no place for the corrupt will. If men are free, they are expressing their real natures; they are beautiful.