No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirled,
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word
She shook the world.
[Footnote: _The Poet_.]

This brings us back to our war poets who have so recently died. Did they
indeed disparage the Muse whom they deserted? Did they not rather die to
fulfill a poet's prophesy of freedom? A poet who did not carry in his
heart the courage of his song--what could be more discreditable to
poetry than that? The soldier-poets were like a general who rushes into
the thick of the fight and dies beside a private. We reverence such a
man, but we realize that it was not his death, but his plan for the
engagement, that saved the day.

If such is the poet's conception of his service to mankind, what is his
reward? The government of society, he returns. Emerson says,

The gods talk in the breath of the woods,
They talk in the shaken pine,
And fill the long reach of the old seashore
With dialogue divine.
And the poet who overhears
Some random word they say
Is the fated man of men
Whom the nations must obey.
[Footnote: Fragment on _The Poet_.]

What is the poet's reward? Immortality. He is confident that if his