We cry, “Weep, rather, Dante.” Poems are
Men, if true poems; and who dares exclaim
At any man’s door, “Here, ’tis understood
The thunder fell last week and killed a wife,
And scared a sickly husband—what of that?
Get up, be merry, shout, and clap your hands,
Because a cheerful genius suits the times?”
None says so to the man—and why, indeed,
Should any to the poem?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.