The classic conception.--Love as a disturbing factor in
composition.--The romantic conception.--Love the source of
inspiration.--Fusion of intense passion with repose essential to
poetry.--Poetic love and Platonic love synonymous.--Sensual love not
suggestive.--The poet's ascent to ideal love.--Analogy with ascent
described in Plato's _Symposium_.--Discontent with ephemeralness of
passion.--Poetry a means of rendering passion eternal.--Insatiability of
the poet's affections.--Idealization of his mistress.--Ideal beauty the
real object of his love.--Fickleness.--Its justification.--Advantage in
seeing varied aspects of ideal beauty.--Remoteness as an essential
factor in ideal love.--Sluggishness resulting from complete
content.--Aspiration the poetic attitude.--Abstract love-poetry,
consciously addressed to ideal beauty.--Its merits and defects.--The
sensuous as well as the ideal indispensable to poetry.

IV. THE SPARK FROM HEAVEN

Reticence of great geniuses regarding inspiration.--Mystery of
inspiration.--The poet's curiosity as to his inspired moments.--Wild
desire preceding inspiration.--Sudden arrest rather than satisfaction of
desire.--Ecstasy.--Analogy with intoxication.--Attitude of reverence
during inspired moments.--Feeling that an outside power is
responsible.--Attempts to give a rational account of inspiration.--The
theory of the sub-conscious.--Prenatal memory.--Reincarnation of dead
geniuses.--Varied conceptions of the spirit inspiring song as the Muse,
nature, the spirit of the universe.--The poet's absolute surrender to
this power.--Madness.--Contempt for the limitations of the human
reason.--Belief in infallibility of inspirations.--Limitations of
inspiration.--Transience.--Expression not given from without.--The work
of the poet's conscious intelligence.--Need for making the vision
intelligible.--Quarrel over the value of hard work.

V. THE POET'S MORALITY

The poet's reliance upon feeling as sole moral guide.--Attack upon his
morals made by philosophers, puritans, philistines.--Professedly wicked
poets.--Their rarity.--Revolt against mass-feeling.--The aesthetic
appeal of sin.--The morally frail poet, handicapped by susceptibility to
passion.--The typical poet's repudiation of immorality.--Feeling that
virtue and poetry are inseparable.--Minor explanations for this
conviction.--The "poet a poem" theory.--Identity of the good and the
beautiful.--The poet's quarrel with the philistine.--The poet's