My thoughts do twine and bud
About thee, as wild vines about a tree
Put out broad leaves, and soon there's nought to see
Except the straggling green that hides the wood.
The non-lover may also recall to our minds the notorious egotism and self-sufficiency of the poet, which seem incompatible with the humility and insatiable yearning of the lover. He exults in the declaration of Keats,
My solitude is sublime,—for, instead of what I have described (i.e., domestic bliss) there is sublimity to welcome me home; the roaring of the wind is my wife; and the stars through the windowpanes are my children; the mighty abstract idea of beauty in all things, I have, stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness. [Footnote: Letter to George Keats, October 31, 1818.]
Borne aloft by his admiration for this passage, the non-lover may himself essay to be sublime. He may picture to us the frozen heights on which genius resides, where the air is too rare for earthly affection. He may declare that Keats' Grecian Urn is a symbol of all art, which must be
All breathing human passion far above.
He will assert that the mission of the poet is "to see life steadily and see it whole," a feat which is impossible if the worship of one figure out of the multitude is allowed to distort relative values, and to throw his view out of perspective.
Finally, the enemy of love may call as witnesses poets whom he fancies he has led astray. Strangely enough, considering the dedication of the Ring and the Book, he is likely to give most conspicuous place among these witnesses to Browning. Like passages of Holy Writ, lines from Browning have been used as the text for whatever harangue a new theorist sees fit to give us. In Youth and Art, the non-lover will point out the characteristic attitude of young people who are "married to their art," and consequently have no capacity for other affection. In Pauline, he will gloat over the hero's confession that he is inept in love because he is concerned with his perceptions rather than with their objects, and his explanation,
I am made up of an intensest life;
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self …
And I can love nothing,—and this dull truth
Has come at last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.
He will point out that Sordello is another example of the same type, for though Sordello is ostensibly the lover of Palma, he really finds nothing outside himself worthy of his unbounded adoration. [Footnote: Compare Browning's treatment of Sordello with the conventional treatment of him as lover, in Sordello, by Mrs. W. Buck (1837).] Turning to Tennyson, in Lucretius the non-lover will note the tragic death of the hero that grows out of the asceticism in love engendered by his absorption in composition. With the greatest pride the enemy of love will point to his popularity in the 1890's, when the artificial and heartless artist enjoyed his greatest vogue. As his most scintillating advocate he will choose Oscar Wilde. Assuring us of many prose passages in his favor, he will read to us the expression of conflict between love and art in Flower of Love, where Wilde exclaims,
I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and though my youth is
gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's
crown of bays,