And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, 'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott."

John Burroughs, in his inspiring essay on Walt Whitman
entitled `The Flight of the Eagle', quotes the following sentence
from a lecture on Burns, delivered by "a lecturer from over seas",
whom he does not name: "When literature becomes dozy, respectable,
and goes in the smooth grooves of fashion, and copies and copies again,
something must be done; and to give life to that dying literature,
a man must be found not educated under its influence."

Such a man I would say was William Cowper, who, in his weakness, was

"Strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation",

and who

"Testified this solemn truth, while phrenzy desolated, --
Nor man nor angel satisfies whom only God created."

John Keats, in his poem entitled `Sleep and Poetry',
has well characterized the soulless poetry of the period between
the Restoration and the poetical revival in the latter part
of the eighteenth century, but more especially of the Popian period.
After speaking of the greatness of his favorite poets
of the Elizabethan period, he continues: --