[Footnote: See _A Toast to Omar Khayyam_.]
was drawn into the contest, and warmed to the theme.

Poetry about the Mermaid Inn is bound to take this tone. From Keats
[Footnote: See _Lines on the Mermaid Inn_.] to Josephine Preston
Peabody [Footnote: See _Marlowe_.] writers on the Elizabethan
dramatists have dwelt upon their conviviality. This aspect is especially
stressed by Alfred Noyes, who imagines himself carried back across the
centuries to become the Ganymede of the great poets. All of the group
keep him busy. In particular he mentions Jonson:

And Ben was there,
Humming a song upon the old black settle,
"Or leave a kiss within the cup
And I'll not ask for wine,"
But meanwhile, he drank malmsey.
[Footnote: _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.]

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 list