ales of the Mermeid Inn_.] poets invariably possess, but the less
phrenological aspect of their beauty is more stressed. The
differentiating mark of the singer's face is a certain luminous quality,
as of the soul shining through. Lamb noticed this peculiarity of
Coleridge, declaring, "His face when he repeats his verses hath its
ancient glory; an archangel a little damaged." [Footnote: E. V. Lucas,
_The Life of Charles Lamb_, Vol. I., p. 500.] Francis Thompson was
especially struck by this phenomenon. In lines _To a Poet Breaking
Silence_, he asserts,

Yes, in this silent interspace
God sets his poems in thy face,

and again, in _Her Portrait_, he muses,

How should I gage what beauty is her dole,
Who cannot see her countenance for her soul,
As birds see not the casement for the sky.

It is through the eyes, of course, that the soul seems to shine most
radiantly. Through them, Rupert Brooke's friends recognized his poetical
nature,--through his

Dream dazzled gaze
Aflame and burning like a god in song.
[Footnote: W. W. Gibson, _To E. M., In Memory of Rupert Brooke_.]

Generally the poet is most struck by the abstracted expression that he
surprises in his eyes. Into it, in the case of later poets, there
probably enters unconscious imitation of Keats's gaze, that "inward
look, perfectly divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions."
[Footnote: The words are Benjamin Haydn's. See Sidney Colvin, _John
Keats_, p. 79.] In many descriptions, as of "the rapt one--the
heaven-eyed" [Footnote: Wordsworth, _On the Death of James Hogg_]
Coleridge, or of Edmund Spenser,

With haunted eyes, like starlit forest pools
[Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.]

one feels the aesthetic possibilities of an abstracted expression. But
Mrs. Browning fails to achieve a happy effect. When she informs us of a
fictitious poet that

His steadfast eye burnt inwardly
As burning out his soul,
[Footnote: '_The Poet's Vow_.]

we feel uneasily that someone should rouse him from his revery before
serious damage is done.

The idealistic poet weans his eyes from their pragmatic character in
varying degree. Wordsworth, in poetic mood, seems to have kept them half
closed.[Footnote: See _A Poet's Epitaph_, and _Sonnet: Most Sweet
it is with Unuplifted Eyes_.] Mrs. Browning notes his

Humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined
Before the sovran-thought of his own mind.
[Footnote: _On a Portrait of Wordswort