otnote: _The Poet_.]

Although the poet's egotism would seem logically to cause him to find
his chief pleasure in undisturbed communion with himself, still this
picture of the poet delighting in solitude cannot be said to follow,
usually, upon his banishment from society. For the most part the poet is
characterized by an insatiable yearning for affection, and by the
stupidity and hostility of other men he is driven into proud loneliness,
even while his heart thirsts for companionship.[Footnote: See John
Clare, _The Stranger, The Peasant Poet, I Am_; James Gates Percival,
_The Bard_; Joseph Rodman Drake, _Brorix_ (1847); Thomas Buchanan Reade,
_My Heritage_; Whittier, _The Tent on the Beach_; Mrs. Frances Gage,
_The Song of the Dreamer_ (1867); R. H. Stoddard, _Utopia_; Abram J.
Ryan, _Poets_; Richard H. Dana, _The Moss Supplicateth for the Poet_;
Frances Anne Kemble, _The Fellowship of Genius_ (1889); F. S. Flint,
_Loneliness_(1909); Lawrence Hope, _My Paramour was Loneliness_ (1905);
Sara Teasdale, _Alone_.] One of the most popular poet-heroes of the last
century, asserting that he is in such an unhappy situation, yet
declares:

For me, I'd rather live
With this weak human heart and yearning blood,
Lonely as God, than mate with barren souls.
More brave, more beautiful than myself must be
The man whom I can truly call my friend.
[Footnote: Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_.]

So the poet is limited to the companionship of rare souls, who make up
to him for the indifference of all the world beside. Occasionally this
compensation is found in romantic love, which flames all the brighter,
because the affections that most people expend on many human
relationships are by the poet turned upon one object. Apropos of the
world's indifference to him, Shelley takes comfort in the assurance of
such communion, saying to Mary,

If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
On his pure name who loves them--thou and I,
Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,--
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by,
That burn from year to year with inextinguished light.
[Footnote: Introduction to _The Revolt of Islam_.]

But though passion is so often the source of his inspiration, the poet's
love affairs are seldom allowed to flourish. The only alleviation of his
loneliness must be, then, in the friendship of unusually gifted and
discerning men, usually of his own c