Though he move mountains, though his day
Be passed on the proud heights of sway,
Though he hath loosed a thousand chains,
Though he hath borne immortal pains,
Action and suffering though he know,
He hath not lived, if he lives so.
[Footnote: _Resignation_.]

It is obvious that in the poet's opinion there is only one means by
which he can help humanity, and that is by helping men to express their
essential natures; in other words, by setting them free. Liberty is
peculiarly the watch-word of the poets. To the philosopher and the
moralist, on the contrary, there is no merit in liberty alone. Men must
be free before they can seek wisdom or goodness, no doubt, but something
beside freedom is needed, they feel, to make men good or evil. But to
the poet, beauty and liberty are almost synonymous. If beauty is the
heart of the universe (and it must be, the poet argues, since it abides
in sense as well as spirit), there is no place for the corrupt will. If
men are free, they are expressing their real natures; they are
beautiful.

Is this our poet's view? But hear Plato: "The tragic poets, being wise
men, will forgive us, and any others who live after our manner, if we do
not receive them into our state, because they are the eulogists of
tyranny." [Footnote: _Republic._] Few enemies of poets nowadays
would go so far as to make a charge like this one, though Thomas
Peacock, who locked horns with Shelley on the question of poetry,
asserted that poets exist only by virtue of their flattery of earth's
potentates. [Footnote: See _The Four Ages of Poetry._] Once, it must
be confessed, one of the poets themselves brought their name into