[Footnote: _L'Envoi_.]

A number of the Victorians acknowledged that they lived from choice in
London. Christina Rossetti admitted frankly that she preferred London to
the country, and defended herself with Bacon's statement, "The souls of
the living are the beauty of the world." [Footnote: See E. L. Gary,
_The Rossettis_, p. 236.] Mrs. Browning made Aurora outgrow pastoral
verse, and not only reside in London, but find her inspiration there.
Francis Thompson and William Henley were not ashamed to admit that they
were inspired by London. James Thomson, B.V., belongs with them in this
regard, for though he depicted the horror of visions conjured up in the
city streets in a way unparalleled in English verse, [Footnote: See _The
City of Dreadful Night_.] this is not the same thing as the romantic
poet's repudiation of the city as an unimaginative environment.

Coming to more recent verse, we find Austin Dobson still feeling it an
anomaly that his muse should prefer the city to the country. [Footnote:
See _On London Stones_.] John Davidson, also, was very self-conscious
about his city poets. [Footnote: See _Fleet Street Eclogues_.] But as
landscape painters are beginning to see and record the beauty in the
most congested city districts, so poets have been making their muse more
and more at home there, until our contemporary poets scarcely stop to
take their residence in the city otherwise than as a matter of course.
Alan Seeger cries out for Paris as the ideal habitat of the singer.
[Footnote: See _Paris_.] Even New York and Chicago [Footnote: See Carl
Sandburg, _Chicago Poems_; Edgar Lee Masters, _The Loop_; William
Griffith, _City Pastorals_; Charles H. Towne, _The City_.] are beginning
to serve as backgrounds for the poet figure. A poem called _A Winter
Night_ reveals Sara Teasdale as thoroughly at home in Manhattan as the
most bucolic shepherd among his flocks.