CHAPTER VI

THE POET'S RELIGION


There was a time, if we may trust anthropologists, when the poet and the
priest were identical, but the modern zeal for specialization has not
tolerated this doubling of function. So utterly has the poet been robbed
of his priestly character that he is notorious, nowadays, as possessing
no religion at all. At least, representatives of the three strongest
critical forces in society, philosophers, puritans and plain men, assert
with equal vehemence that the poet has no religion that agrees with
their interpretation of that word.

As was the case in their attack upon the poet's morals, so in the
refusal to recognize his religious beliefs, the poet's three enemies are
in merely accidental agreement. The philosopher condemns the poet as
incapable of forming rational theological tenets, because his temper is
unspeculative, or at most, carries him no farther than a materialistic
philosophy. The puritan condemns the poet as lacking reverence, that is,
as having no "religious instinct." The plain man, of course, charges the
poet, in this particular as in all others, with failure to conform. The
poet shows no respect, he avers, for the orthodox beliefs of society.

The quarrel of the poet and the philosopher has at no time been more in
evidence than at present. The unspeculativeness of contemporary poetry
is almost a creed. Poets, if they are to be read, must take a solemn
pledge to confine their range of subject-matter to fleeting impressions
of the world of sense. The quarrel was only less in evidence in the