universe; his mimic play and "the great globe itself" are alike an
"insubstantial pageant," though it may happen, as Tennyson said of
Wordsworth, that even in the transient he gives the sense of the
abiding, "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns."

But this perception of relations, characteristic as it is of the poetic
temper, is also an attribute of the philosopher. The intellect of a
Newton, too, leaps from the specific instance to the general law; every
man, in proportion to his intelligence and insight, feels that the world
is one; while Plato and Descartes play with the time and space world with
all the grave sportiveness of Prospero.

Again, the poets have always been the "genus irritabile"--the irritable
tribe. They not only see deeply, but feel acutely. Often they are too
highly sensitized for their own happiness. If they receive a pleasure more
exquisite than ours from a flower, a glimpse of the sea, a gracious
action, they are correspondingly quick to feel dissonances, imperfections,
slights. Like Lamb, they are "rather squeamish about their women and
children." Like Keats, they are "snuffed out by an article." Keener
pleasures, keener pains, this is the law of their life; but it is
applicable to all persons of the so-called artistic temperament. It is one
of the penalties of a fine organism. It does not of itself describe a
poet.
[Footnote: I have here utilized a few paragraphs from my chapter on
"Poetry" in _Counsel upon the Reading of Books_, Houghton Mifflin
Company.]

The real difference between "the poet" and other men is rather to be
traced, as the present chapter has tried to indicate, in his capacity for
making and employing verbal images of a certain kind, and combining these