bility of long life for his race.
Browning, despite the sadness of the poet's age recorded in _Cleon_
and the _Prologue to Aslando_, should doubtless be remembered for
his belief in

The last of life for which the first was made,

as applied to poets as well as to other men. In America old age found
its most enthusiastic advocate in Walt Whitman, who in lines _To Get
the Final Lilt of Songs_ indicated undiminished confidence in himself
at eighty. Bayard Taylor, [Footnote: See _My Prologue_.] too, and
Edward Dowden, [Footnote: See _The Mage_.] were not dismayed by
their longevity.

But we are most concerned, naturally, with wholly impersonal verse, and
in it the aged poet is never wholly absent from English thought. As the
youthful singer suggests the southland, so the aged bard seems
indigenous to the north. It seems inevitable that Gray should depict the
Scotch bard as old, [Footnote: _The Bard_.] and that Scott's
minstrels should be old. Campbell, too, follows the Scotch tradition.
[Footnote: See _Lochiel's Warning_.] It is the prophetic power of
these fictional poets, no doubt, that makes age seem essential to them.
The poet in Campbell's poem explains,

'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore.

Outside of Scotch poetry one finds, occasionally, a similar faith in the
old poet. Mrs. Browning's observation tells her that maturity alone can
express itself with youthful freshness. Aurora declares,

I count it strange and hard to understand
That nearly all young poets should write old.
... It may be perhaps
Such have not settled long and deep enough
In trance to attain to clairvoyance, and still
The memory mixes with the vision, spoils
And works it turbid. Or perhaps again
In order to discover the Muse Sphinx
The melancholy desert must sweep around
Behind you as before.

Aurora feels, indeed, that the poet's gift is not proved till age. She
sighs, remembering her own youth,

Alas, near all the birds
Will sing at dawn,--and yet we do not take
The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.

Coinciding with this feeling is Rossetti's sentiment:
... Many men are poets in their youth,
But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
Even through all age the indomitable song.
[Footnote: _Genius in Beauty_.]

Alice Meynell, [Footnote: See _To any Poet_.] too, and Richard Watson
Gilder [Footnote: See _Life is a Bell_.] feel that increasing power of
song comes with ag