The paradox in poets' views was equally perplexing, no matter what phase of the poetic character was considered. A mere resumé of the topics discussed in these essays is enough to make the two horns of the dilemma obtrude themselves. Did we consider the financial status of the poet? We heard that he should experience all the luxurious sensations that wealth can bring; on the other hand we heard that his poverty should shield him from distractions that might call him away from accumulation of spiritual treasure. Did we consider the poet's age? We heard that the freshness of sensation possessed only by youth carries the secret of poetry; on the other hand we heard that the secret lies in depth of spiritual insight possible only to old age. So in the allied question of the poet's body. He should have
The dress
Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness
At eye and ear,
that no beauty in the physical world may escape him. Yet he should be absorbed in the other world to such a degree that blindness, even, is a blessing to him, enabling him to "see, no longer blinded by his eyes." The question of the poet's health arose. He should have the exuberance and aplomb of the young animal; no, he should have a body frail enough to enable him, like the mediæval mystic, to escape from its importunatedemands upon the spirit.
In the more fundamental questions that poets considered, relating to the poet's temperament, his loves, his inspiration, his morality, his religion, his mission, the same cleavage invariably appeared. What constitutes the poetic temperament? It is a fickle interchange of joy and grief, for the poet is lifted on the wave of each new sensation; it is an imperturbable serenity, for the poet dwells apart with the eternal verities. What is the distinguishing characteristic of his love? The object of his worship must be embodied, passionate, yet his desire is for purely spiritual union with her. What is the nature of his inspiration? It fills him with trancelike impassivity to sensation; it comes upon him with such overwhelming sensation that he must touch the walls to see whether they or his visions are the reality. [Footnote: See Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of Wordsworth, Vol. II, p. 480.] How is his moral life different from that of other men? He is more fiercely tempted, because he is more sensitive to human passions; he is shut away from all temptations because his interest is solely in the principle of beauty. What is the nature of his religious instinct? He is mad with thirst for God; he will have no God but his own humanity. What is his mission? He must awaken men to the wonder of the physical world and fit them to abide therein; he must redeem them from physical bondage, and open their eyes to the spiritual world.
The impatient listener to this lengthy catalogue of the poet's views may assert that it has no significance. It merely shows that there are many kinds of poets, who attempt to imitate many aspects of human life. But surely our catalogue does not show just this. There is no multiform picture of the poet here. The pendulum of his desire vibrates undeviatingly between two points only. Sense and spirit, spirit and sense, the pulse of his nature seems to reiterate incessantly. There is no poet so absorbed in sensation that physical objects do not occasionally fade into unreality when he compares them with the spirit of life. Even Walt Whitman, most sensuous of all our poets, exclaims,
Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul
That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions,
concepts, non-realities.
[Footnote: Apparitions.]
On the other hand there is no poet whose taste is so purely spiritual that he is indifferent to sensation. The idealism of Wordsworth, even, did not preclude his finding in sensation
An appetite, a feeling and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied.
Is this systole and diastole of the affection from sense to spirit, from spirit to sense, peculiarly characteristic of English poets? There may be some reason for assuming that it is. Historians have repeatedly pointed out that there are two strains in the English blood, the one northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should venture the assertion that the dualism of the poet's desires is not an insular characteristic, but is typical of his race in every country.
Because the poet is drawn equally to this world and to the other world, shall we characterize him as a hybrid creature, and assert that an irreconcilable discord is in his soul? We shall prove ourselves singularly deaf to concord if we do so. Poets have been telling us over and over again that the distinctive element in the poetic nature is harmony. What is harmony? It is the reconciliation of opposites, says Eurymachus in the Symposium. It is union of the finite and the infinite, says Socrates in the Philebus. Do the poet's desires point in opposite directions? But so, it seems, do the poplars that stand tiptoe, breathless, at the edge of the dreaming pool. The whole secret of the aesthetic repose lies in the duality of the poet's desire. His imagination enables him to see all life as two in one, or one in two; he leaves us uncertain which. His imagination reflects the spiritual in the sensual and the sensual in the spiritual till we cannot tell which is the more tangible or the more meaningful. We sought unity in the poetic character, but we can reduce a nature to complete and barren unity only by draining it of imagination, and it is imagination which enables the poet to find aesthetic unity in the two worlds of sense and spirit, where the rest of us can see only conflict. There is a little poem, by Walter Conrad Arensberg, which is to me a symbol of this power of reflection which distinguishes the poetic imagination. It is called Voyage à L'Infine: