tory Teller Poet_; Gerald Massey, _To Hood Who Sang the
Song of the Shirt_; Bayard Taylor, _A Friend's Greeting to Whittier_;
Sidney Lanier, _Wagner_, _Clover_; C. A. Pierce, _The Poet's Ideal_; E.
Markham, _The Bard_, _A Comrade Calling Back_, _An April Greeting_; G.
L. Raymond, _A Life in Song_; Richard Gilder, _The City_, _The Dead
Poet_; E. L. Cox, _The Master_, _Overture_; R. C. Robbins, _Wordsworth_;
Carl McDonald, _A Poet's Epitaph_.] It is inevitable that every poet's
feeling for the world should be that of Shelley, who says to the spirit
of beauty,

Never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery.
[Footnote: _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_.]
For, unlike the philosopher, the poet has never departed from the world
of sense, and it is hallowed to him as the incarnation of beauty.
Therefore he is eager to make other men ever more and more transparent
embodiments of their true selves, in order that, gazing upon them, the
poet may have ever deeper inspiration. This is the central allegory in
_Enydmion_, that the poet must learn to help humanity before the mystery
of poetship shall be unlocked to him. Browning comments to this effect
upon Bordello's unwillingness to meet the world:

But all is changed the moment you descry
Mankind as half yourself.

Matthew Arnold is the sternest of modern poets, perhaps, in pointing out
the poet's responsibility to humanity:

The poet, to whose mighty heart
Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,
Subdues that energy to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
Though he move mountains, though his day
Be passed on the proud heights of sway,
Though he hath loosed a thousand chains,
Though he hath borne immortal pains,
Action and suffering though he know,
He hath not lived, if he lives so.
[Footnote: _Resignation_.]

It is obvious that in the poet's opinion there is only one means by
which he can help humanity, and that is by helping men to express their
essential natures; in other words, by setting them free. Liberty is
peculiarly the watch-word of the poets. To the philosopher and the
moralist, on the contrary, there is no merit in liberty alone. Men must
be free before they can seek wisdom or goodness, no doubt, but something
beside freedom is needed, they feel, to make men good or evil. But to
the poet, beauty and liberty are almost synonymous. If beauty is the
heart of the universe (and it must