To poets' minds the only unaesthetic habitat nowadays seems to be the
country town. Although Edgar Lee Masters writes what he calls poetry
inspired by it, the reader of the _Spoon River Anthology_ is still
disposed to sympathize with Benjamin Fraser of Spoon River, the artist
whose genius was crushed by his ghastly environment.

So manifold, in fact, are the attractions of the world to the modern
poet, that the vagabond singer has come into special favor lately. Of
course he has appeared in English song ever since the time of minstrels,
but usually, as in the Old English poem, _The Wanderer_, he has been
unhappy in his roving life. Even so modern a poet as Scott was in the
habit of portraying his minstrels as old and homesick. [Footnote: See
_The Lay of the Last Minstrel_.] But Byron set the fashion among poets
of desiring "a world to roam through," [Footnote: _Epistle to Augusta_.]
and the poet who is a wanderer from choice has not been unknown since
Byron's day. [Footnote: Alfred Dommett and George Borrow are notable.]
The poet vagabond of to-day, as he is portrayed in Maurice Hewlitt's
autobiographical novels, _Rest Harrow_ and _Open Country_, and William
H. Davies' tramp poetry, looks upon his condition in life as ideal.
[Footnote: See also Francis Carlin, _Denby the Rhymer_ (1918); Henry
Herbert Knibbs, _Songs of the Trail_ (1920)] Alan Seeger, too,
concurred in the view, declaring,

Down the free roads of human happiness
I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart.
[Footnote: _Sonnet to Sidney_.]

"Poor of purse!" The words recall us to another of the poet's quarrels
with the world in which he is imprisoned. Should the philanthropist, as