Distinction ought to be drawn between the poet and the man who has written poetry. There are certainly men of only one poem, a James Clarence Mangan, a Christopher Smart, a Julian Grenfell (these are instances more convenient than accurate) who may be explained either as born poets, tortured with a lifelong mental conflict, though able perhaps only once in their life to “go under” to their own self-hypnotism, or as not naturally poets at all but men who write to express a sudden intolerable clamour in their brain; this is when circumstances have momentarily alienated the usually happy members of their mental family, but once the expression has brought reconciliation, there is no further need of poetry, and the poet born out of due time, ceases to be. This temporary writing of poetry by normal single-track minds is most common in youth when the sudden realization of sex, its powers and its limited opportunities for satisfactory expression, turns the world upside down for any sensitive boy or girl. Wartime has the same sort of effect. I have definite evidence for saying that much of the trench-poetry written during the late war was the work of men not otherwise poetically inclined, and that it was very frequently due to an insupportable conflict between suppressed instincts of love and fear; the officer’s actual love which he could never openly show, for the boys he commanded, and the fear, also hidden under a forced gaiety, of the horrible death that threatened them all. XI SPENSER’S CUFFS The poet’s quarrelsome lesser personalities to which I have referred are divided into camps by the distinction of sex. But in a poet the dominant spirit is male and though usually a feminist in sympathy, cannot afford to favour the women at the expense of his own sex. This amplifies my distrust of poets with floppy hats, long hair, extravagant clothes and inverted tendencies. Apollo never to my knowledge appears in Greek art as a Hermaphrodite, and the Greeks understood such problems far better than we do. I know it is usual to defend these extravagances of dress by glorifying the Elizabethan age; but let it be remembered that Edmund Spenser himself wore “short hair, little bands and little cuffs.” If there is no definite sexual inversion to account for breaking out in fancy dress, a poet who is any good at all ought not to feel the need of advertising his profession in this way. As I understand the poet’s nature, though he tries to dress as conventionally as possible, he will always prove too strong for his clothes and look completely ridiculous or very magnificent according to the occasion. This matter of dress may seem unimportant, but people are still so shy of acknowledging the poet in his lifetime as a gifted human being who may have something important to say, that any dressing up or unnecessary strutting does a great deal of harm.