_Gleaners of Fame_, Alfred Austin; _Another Tattered Rhymster in the
Ring_, G. K. Chesterton; _To Any Poet_, Alice Meynell; _The Singer_, and
_To a Lady on Chiding Me For Not Writing_, Richard Realf; _The Will and
the Wing_ and _Though Dowered with Instincts Keen and High_, P. H.
Haynes; _Dull Words_, Trumbull Stickney; _The Inner Passion_, Alfred
Noyes; _The Veiled Muse_, William Winter; _Sonnet_, William Bennett;
_Tell Me_, Max Ehrmann; _The Singer's Plea_, Edward Dowden; _Genius_, R.
H. Home; _My Country_, George Woodberry; _Uncalled_, Madison Cawein;
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, _At the Funeral of a Minor Poet_; Robert Haven
Schauffler, _Overtones, The Silent Singers_; Stephen Vincent Benet, _A
Minor Poet_; Alec de Candole, _The Poets_.] and aver that he too is an
earnest and humble suppliant in the temple of beauty. For the clearer
his glimpse of the transcendent vision has been, the more conscious he
is of his blindness after the glory has passed, and the more
unquenchable is his desire for a new and fuller revelation.




CHAPTER V

THE POET'S MORALITY


If English poets of the last century are more inclined to parade their
moral virtue than are poets of other countries, this may be the result
of a singular persistency on the part of England in searching out and
punishing sins ascribed to poetic temperament. Byron was banished;
Shelley was judged unfit to rear his own children; Keats was advertised
as an example of "extreme moral depravity"; [Footnote: By _Blackwoods_.]