The Poet's Poet : essays on the character and mission of the poet as interpreted in English verse of the last one hundred and fifty years

by Elizabeth Atkins

Fortunately for the future of American verse, there is another side to the picture. The teetotaler poet is by no means non-existent in the last century. Wordsworth takes pains to refer to himself as "a simple, water-drinking bard," [Footnote: See The Waggoner.] and in lines To the Sons of Burns he delivers a very fine prohibition lecture. Tennyson offers us Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, a reductio ad absurdum of the claims of the bibulous bard. Then, lest the temperance cause lack the support of great names, Longfellow causes the title character of Michael Angelo to inform us that he "loves not wine," while, more recently, E. A. Robinson pictures Shakespeare's inability to effervesce with his comrades, because, Ben Jonson confides to us,

Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it,
He's wondering what's to pay on his insides.
[Footnote: Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford. See also
Poe's letter, April 1, 1841, to Snodgrass, on the unfortunate results of
his intemperance.]

No, the poet will not allow us to take his words too seriously, lest we drag down Apollo to the level of Bacchus. In spite of the convincing realism in certain eulogies, it is clear that to the poet, as to the convert at the eucharist, wine is only a symbol of a purely spiritual ecstasy. But if intoxication is only a figure of speech, it is a significant one, and perhaps some of the other myths describing the poet's sensations during inspiration may put us on the trail of its meaning. Of course, in making such an assumption, we are precisely like the expounder of Plato's myths, who is likely to say, "Here Plato was attempting to shadow forth the inexpressible. Now listen, and I will explain exactly what he meant." Notwithstanding, we must proceed.

The device of Chaucer's House of Fame, wherein the poet is carried to celestial realms by an eagle, occasionally occurs to the modern poet as an account of his Aufschwung. Thus Keats, in Lines to Apollo, avers,

Aye, when the soul is fled
Too high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze
As doth a mother wild
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws.

"Poetry, my life, my eagle!" [Footnote: Aurora Leigh.] cries Mrs. Browning, likening herself to Ganymede, ravished from his sheep to the summit of Olympus. The same attitude is apparent in most of her poems, for Mrs. Browning, in singing mood, is precisely like a child in a swing, shouting with delight at every fresh sensation of soaring. [Footnote: See J. G. Percival, Genius Awaking, for the same figure.]

Again, the crash of the poet's inspiration upon his ordinary modes of thought is compared to "fearful claps of thunder," by Keats [Footnote: See Sleep and Poetry.] and others. [Footnote: See The Master, A. E. Cheney.] Or, more often, his moment of sudden insight seems a lightning flash upon the dark ways in which he is ordinarily groping. Keats says that his early visions were seen as through a rift of sheet lightning. [Footnote: See The Epistle to George Keats.] Emerson's impression is the same; visions come "as if life were a thunderstorm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand." [Footnote: Essay on Inspiration.] Likewise Alexander Smith declares,

Across the midnight sea of mind
A thought comes streaming like a blazing ship
Upon a mighty wind,
A terror and a glory! Shocked with light,
His boundless being glares aghast.
[Footnote: A Life Drama.]

Perhaps this is a true expression of the poet's feelings during the deepest inspiration, yet we are minded of Elijah's experience with the wind and the fire and the still small voice. So we cannot help sympathizing with Browning's protest against "friend Naddo's" view that genius is a matter of bizarre and grandiose sensations. [Footnote: Sordello.] At least it is pleasant to find verse, by minor writers though it be, describing the quietude and naturalness of the poet's best moments. Thus Holmes tells us of his inspiration:

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought
Endymion's fragrant bower,
She parts the whispering leaves of thought
To show her full-leaved flower.
[Footnote: Invita Minerva.]