It may be that Plato is right, yet one cannot help wishing that sometime a poet may arise of greater power of persuasion than any with whom we have dealt, who will prove to Plato what he appears ever longing to be convinced of, that absolute ideality is not a negation of the sensual, and that poetry, in revealing the union of sense and spirit, is the strongest proof of idealism that we possess. A poet may yet arise who will prove that he is right in refusing to acknowledge that this world is merely a surface upon which is reflected the ideals which constitute reality and which abide in a different realm. The assumption in that conception is that, if men have spiritual vision, they may apprehend ideals directly, altogether apart from sense. On the contrary, the impression given by the poet is that ideality constitutes the very essence of the so-called physical world, and that this essence is continually striving to express itself through refinement and remolding of the outer crust of things. So, when the world of sense comes to express perfectly the ideal, it will not be a mere representation of reality. It will be reality. If he can prove this, we must acknowledge that, not the rationalistic philosopher, but the poet, grasps reality in toto.
However inconclusive his proof, the claims of the poet must fascinate one with their implications. The two aspects of human life, the physical and the ideal, focus in the poet, and the result is the harmony which is art. The fact is of profound philosophical significance, surely, for union of the apparent contradictions of the sensual and the spiritual can only mean that idealism is of the essence of the universe. What is the poetic metaphor but the revelation of an identical meaning in the physical and spiritual world? The sympathetic reader of poetry cannot but see the reflection of the spiritual in the sensual, and the sensual in the spiritual, even as does the poet, and one, as the other, must be by temperament an idealist.
INDEX
Addison, Joseph,
"A.E." (see George William Russell),
Aeschylus,
Agathon,
Akins, Zoe,
Alcaeus,
Aldrich, Anne Reeve,
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey,
Alexander, Hartley Burr,
Alexander, William,
Allston, Washington,
Ambercrombe, Lascelles,
Anderson, Margaret Steele,
Angelo, Michael,
Arensberg, Walter Conrad,
Aristotle,
Arnold, Edwin,
Arnold, Matthew,
his discontent;
on the poet's death;
inspiration;
loneliness; morality;
religion;
usefulness;
youth;
his sense of superiority.
Arnold, Thomas,
Asquith, Herbert,
Austin, Alfred,
Bacon, Josephine Dodge Daskam,
Baker, Karle Wilson,
Baudelaire, Charles Pierre,
Beatrice,
Beattie, James,
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell,
Beers, Henry A.,
Benét, Stephen Vincent,
Benét, William Rose,
Bennet, William,
Binyon, Robert Lawrence,
Blake, William,
later poets on;
on inspiration;
on the poet as truthteller;
on the poet's religion.
Blunden, Edmund,
Boccaccio,
Boker, George Henry,
Borrow, George,
Bowles, William Lisle,
Branch, Anna Hempstead,
Brawne, Fanny H.,
Bridges, Robert,
Brontë, Emily,
Brooke, Rupert,
Browne, T. E.,
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
appearance;
Aurora Leigh;
on Keats;
on the poet's age;
content with his own time;
democracy;
eyes;
habitat;
health,
humanitarianism,
inferiority to his creations,
inspiration,
love,
morals,
pain,
personality,
religion,
resentment at patronage,
self-consciousness,
self-expression,
sex,
usefulness,
other poets on,
Browning, Robert,
on fame,
on inspiration,
on the poet's beauty,
loneliness,
love,
morals,
persecutions,
pride,
religion,
self-expression,
sex,
superiority,
usefulness,
on Shakespeare,
on Shelley,
Sordello,
other poets on
Bryant, William Cullen
Buchanan, Robert
Bunker, John Joseph
Burke, Edmund
Burleigh, William Henry
Burnet, Dana
Burns, Robert,
his self-depreciation,
on the poet's caste,
habitat,
inspiration,
love of liberty,
morals, persecutions,
poverty,
superiority,
other poets on
Burton, Richard
Butler, Samuel
Byron, Lord,
his body,
escape from himself in poetry,
friendship with Shelley,
indifference to fame,
later poets on,
his morals,
his mother,
his religion,
self-portraits in verse,
superiority,
on Tasso
Camöens
Campbell, Thomas
Campion, Thomas
Candole, Alec de
Carlin, Francis
Carlyle, Thomas
Carman, Bliss
Carpenter, Rhys
Cary, Alice
Cary, Elisabeth Luther
Cassells, S. J.
Cavalcanti, Guido
Cawein, Madison
Cellini, Benvenuto
Cervantes
Chapman, George
Chatterton, Thomas
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Cheney, Annie Elizabeth
Chénièr, André
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Chivers, Thomas Holley
Clare, John
Clough, Arthur Hugh
Coleridge, Hartley
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,
appearance;
on Blake;
on Chatterton;
friendship with Wordsworth;
on the poet's habitat;
health;
love;
morals;
reflection in nature;
religion;
youth;
usefulness;
later poets on
Collins, William,
Colonna, Vittoria,
Colvin, Sidney,
Conkling, Grace Hazard,
Cornwall, Barry (see Procter, Bryan Waller),
Cowper, William,
Cox, Ethel Louise,
Crabbe, George,
Crashaw, Richard,
Cratylus,
Dana, Richard Henry,
Daniel, Samuel,
D'Annunzio, Gabriele,
Dante,
G.L. Raymond on;
Oscar Wilde on;
Sara King Wiley on;
Dargan, Olive,
David,
Davidson, John,
Davies, William Henry,
Dermody, Thomas,
Descartes,
Dickinson, Emily,
Dionysodorus,
Dobell, Sidney,
Dobson, Austin,
Dommett, Alfred,
Donne, John,
Dowden, Edward,
Dowson, Ernest,
Drake, Joseph Rodman,
Drinkwater, John,
Druce, C.J.,
Dryden, John,
Dunbar, Paul Laurence,
Dunroy, William Reed,
Dunsany, Lord Edward,
Dyer, Sidney,
Ehrman, Max,
Elijah,
Eliot, Ebenezer,
Eliot, George,
Emerson, Ralph Waldo,
his contempt for the public;
his democracy;
his humility;
on inspiration;
on love of fame;
on the poet's divinity;
love;
morals;
poverty;
solitude;
usefulness
Euripedes,
Euthydemus,
Evans, Mrs. E.H.,
Fainier, C.H.,
Fairfield, S. L.,
Field, Eugene.,
Flecker, James Elroy,
Flint, F.S.,
French, Daniel Chester,
Freneau, Philip Morin,
Fuller, Frances,
Fuller, Metta,
Gage, Mrs. Frances,
Garnett, Richard,
Gibson, Wilfred Wilson,
Giddings, Franklin Henry,
Gilbert, Sir William Schwenek
Gilder, Richard Watson;
on Helen Hunt Jackson;
on Emma Lazarus;
on the poet's age;
blindness;
inspiration;
morality;
normality;
poverty
Gillman, James
Giltinan, Caroline
Goethe
Gosse, Edmund
Gosson, Stephen
Graves, Robert
Gray, Thomas
Grenfil, Julian
Griffith, William
Guiterman, Arthur