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into ocean pour. But ours is bottomless and hath no shore. The manner of achieving this necessary remoteness is a nice problem. Of course the poet may choose it, with open eyes, as the Marlowe of Miss Peabody's imagination does, or as the minstrel in Hewlitt's _Cormac, Son of Ogmond_. The long engagements of Rossetti and Tennyson are often quoted as exemplifying this idiosyncrasy of poets. But there is something decidedly awkward in such a situation, inasmuch as it is not till love becomes so intense as to eclipse the poet's pride and joy in poetry that it becomes effective as a muse. [Footnote: See Mrs. Browning, Sonnet VII. And this! this lute and song, loved yesterday, Are only dear, the singing angels know Because thy name moves right in what they say.] The minor poet, to be sure, is often discovered solicitously feeling his pulse to gauge the effect of love on his rhymes, but one does not feel that his verse gains by it. Therefore, an external obstacle is usually made to intervene. As often as not, this obstacle is the indifference of the beloved. One finds rejected poets by the dozens, mourning in the verse of our period. The sweetheart's reasons are manifold; her suitor's inferior station and poverty being favorites. But one wonders if the primary reason may not be the quality of the love offered by the poet, whose extreme humility and idealization are likely to engender pride and contempt in the lady, she being unaware that it is the reflection of his own soul that the poet is worshipping in her. One can feel some sympathy with the lady in Thomas Hardy's _I Rose Up as My Custom Is_, who, when her lover's ghost discovers her beside a snoring spouse, confesses that she is content with her lot: He makes no quest into my thoughts, But a poet wants to know What one has felt from earliest days, Why one thought not in other ways, And one's loves of long ago. It may be, too, that an instinct for protection has something to do with the lady's rejection, for a recent poet has openly proclaimed the effect of attaining, in successful love, one step toward absolute beauty: O beauty, as thy heart o'erflows In tender yielding unto me, A vast desire awakes and grows Unto forgetfulness of thee. [Footnote: "A. E.," _The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty_.] Rejection is apt to prove an obstacle of double worth to the poet, since it not only removes him to a distance where his lady's hum
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