Divinely to the brain;
For thus the poet at the last shall reach
His own soul's voice, nor crave a brother's string.
[Footnote: _Ode to Shelly._]

In the theory that the genius of a past poet may be reincarnated, there
is, indeed, a danger that keeps it from appealing to all poets. It
tallies too well with the charge of imitativeness, if not downright
plagiarism, often brought against a new singer. [Footnote: See Margaret
Steele Anderson, _Other People's Wreaths,_ and John Drinkwater,
_My Songs._] If the poet feels that his genius comes from a power
outside himself, he yet paradoxically insists that it must be peculiarly
his own. Therefore Mrs. Browning, through Aurora Leigh, shrinks from the
suspicion that her gift may be a heritage from singers before her. She
wistfully inquires:

My own best poets, am I one with you?
. . . When my joy and pain,
My thought and aspiration, like the stops
Of pipe or flute, are absolutely dumb
Unless melodious, do you play on me,
My pipers, and if, sooth, you did not play,
Would no sound come? Or is the music mine;
As a man's voice or breath is called his own,
Inbreathed by the life-breather?

Are we exaggerating our modern poet's conviction that a spirit not his
own is inspiring him? Does he not rather feel self-sufficient as
compared with the earlier singers, who expressed such naive dependence
upon the Muse? We have been using the name Muse in this essay merely as