Emprize--the world's occasion worthless since
Not absolutely fitted to evince
Its mastery!
[Footnote: _Sordello_.]

But one is inclined to question the justice of Browning's charge, at
least so far as it applies peculiarly to the poet. Logically, he should
devote himself to sense-blinded humanity, not reluctantly, like the
philosopher descending to a gloomy cave which is not his natural
habitat, but eagerly, since the poet is dependent upon sense as well as
spirit for his vision. "This is the privilege of beauty," says Plato,
"that, being the loveliest of the ideas, she is also the most palpable
to sight." [Footnote: _Phaedrus_.] Accordingly the poet has no
horror of physical vision as a bondage, but he is fired with an
enthusiasm to make the world of sense a more transparent medium of
beauty. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with the poet's humanitarian
aspect, see Bowles, _The Visionary Boy_, _On the Death of the
Rev. Benwell_; Wordsworth, _The Poet and the Caged Turtle Dove_;
Arnold, _Heine's Grave_; George Eliot, _O May I Join the Choir
Invisible_; Lewis Morris, _Food Of Song_; George Meredith, _Milton_;
Bulwer Lytton, _Milton_; James Thomson, B. V., _Shelley_; Swinburne,
_Centenary of Landor_, _Victor Hugo_, _Victor Hugo in 1877_, _Ben
Jonson_, _Thomas Decker_; Whittier, _To J. P._, and _The Tent on the
Beach_; J. R. Lowell, _To The Memory of Hood_; O. W. Holmes, _At a
Meeting of the Burns Club_; Emerson, _Solution_; R. Realf, _Of Liberty
and Charity_; W. H. Burleigh, _Shelley_; T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the
Golden Age_; Eugene Field, _Poet and King_; C. W. Hubner, _The Poet_; J.
H. West, _O Story Teller Poet_; Gerald Massey, _To Hood Who Sang the
Song of the Shirt_; Bayard Taylor, _A Friend's Greeting to Whittier_;
Sidney Lanier, _Wagner_, _Clover_; C. A. Pierce, _The Poet's Ideal_; E.