It is doubtful indeed that the poet would have his fate averted. Pope's satirical coupling of want and song, as cause and effect,
One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye,
The cave of Poverty and Poetry.
Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,
Emblem of music caused by emptiness,
[Footnote: Dunciad.]
is accepted quite literally by later writers. Emerson's theory of compensations applies delightfully here as everywhere, and he meditates on the poet,
The Muse gave special charge
His learning should be deep and large,—
* * * * *
His flesh should feel, his eyes should read
Every maxim of dreadful need.
* * * * *
By want and pain God screeneth him
Till his appointed hour.
[Footnote: The Poet.]
It may appear doubtful to us whether the poet has painted ideal conditions for the nurture of genius in his picture of the poet's physical frame, his environment, and his material endowment, inasmuch as the death rate among young bards,—imaginary ones, at least, is appalling. What can account for it?
In a large percentage of cases, the poet's natural frailty of constitution is to blame for his early death, of course, but another popular explanation is that the very keenness of the poet's flame causes it to burn out the quicker. Byron finds an early death fitting to him,
For I had the share of life that might have filled a century,
Before its fourth in time had passed me by.
[Footnote: Epistle to Augusta.]
A fictitious poet looks back upon the same sort of life, and reflects,
… For my thirty years,
Dashed with sun and splashed with tears,
Wan with revel, red with wine,
Other wiser happier men
Take the full three score and ten.
[Footnote: Alfred Noyes, Tales of the Mermaid Inn.]
this richness of experience is not inevitably bound up with recklessness, poets feel. The quality is in such a poet even as Emily Brontë, of whom it is written: