For I would wear myself out,

Omar Khayyam's

While you live
Drink!--for once dead you never shall return,

Swinburne's cry of despair,

Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has
grown gray with thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the
fullness of death,[Footnote: _Hymn to Proserpine_.]

show that in a revulsion from the asceticism of the puritan, no less
than in a revulsion from the stupidity of the plain man, it may become
easy for the poet to carry his _carpe diem_ philosophy very far. His
talisman, pure love of beauty, must be indeed unerring if it is to
guide aright his

principle of restlessness
That would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all
[Footnote: _Pauline_.]

The puritan sees, with grim pleasure, that an occasional poet confesses
that his sense of beauty is not strong enough to lead him at all times.
Emerson admits this, telling us, in _The Poet_, that although the
singer perceives ideals in his moments of afflatus which

Turn his heart from lovely maids,