My thoughts do twine and bud
About thee, as wild vines about a tree
Put out broad leaves, and soon there's nought to see
Except the straggling green that hides the wood.

The non-lover may also recall to our minds the notorious egotism and
self-sufficiency of the poet, which seem incompatible with the humility
and insatiable yearning of the lover. He exults in the declaration of
Keats,

My solitude is sublime,--for, instead of what I have
described (_i.e._, domestic bliss) there is sublimity
to welcome me home; the roaring of the wind is my wife; and
the stars through the windowpanes are my children; the
mighty abstract idea of beauty in all things, I have,
stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.
[Footnote: Letter to George Keats, October 31, 1818.]

Borne aloft by his admiration for this passage, the non-lover may
himself essay to be sublime. He may picture to us the frozen heights on
which genius resides, where the air is too rare for earthly affection.
He may declare that Keats' Grecian Urn is a symbol of all art, which
must be

All breathing human passion far above.

He will assert that the mission of the poet is "to see life steadily and
see it whole," a feat which is impossible if the worship of one figure
out of the multitude is allowed to distort relative values, and to throw