Sad memory with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing, of palm or pine?
A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.
[Footnote: _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, XVII.]
Each of these situations has been celebrated as begetting the poet's
inspiration.

To follow the process of elimination, we may first dispose of the
married state as least likely to be spiritually creative. It is true
that we find a number of poems addressed by poets to their wives. But
these are more likely to be the contented purring of one who writes by a
cozy fireside, than the passionate cadence of one whose genius has been
fanned to flame. One finds but a single champion of the married state
considered abstractly. This is Alfred Austin, in whose poem, _The Poet
and the Muse_, his genius explains to the newly betrothed poet:

How should you, poet, hope to sing?
The lute of love hath a single string.
Its note is sweet as the coo of the dove,
But 'tis only one note, and the note is love.

But when once you have paired and built your nest,
And can brood thereon with a settled breast,
You will sing once more, and your voice will stir
All hearts with the sweetness gained from her.

And perhaps even Alfred Austin's vote is canceled by his inconsistent
statement in his poem on Petrarch, _At Vaucluse_,

Let this to lowlier bards atone,