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." [Footnote: Michael Angelo.] 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;
I go to the god of the wood,
To fetch his word to men.
[Footnote: The Apology.]
He points out the idiosyncrasy of the poet:
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
[Footnote: Saadi.]
Thus he works up to his climactic statement regarding the amplitude of the poet's personality:
I have no brothers and no peers
And the dearest interferes;
When I would spend a lonely day,
Sun and moon are in my way.
[Footnote: The Poet.]
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.[Footnote: 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.] 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.
[Footnote: Alexander Smith, A Life Drama.]
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 indifference to him, Shelley takes comfort in the assurance of such communion, saying to Mary,
If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
On his pure name who loves them—thou and I,
Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,—
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by,
That burn from year to year with inextinguished light.
[Footnote: Introduction to The Revolt of Islam.]