Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke. Soil so quick receptive,--not one feather-seed, Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed Sudden as spontaneous--prove a poet soul! Indeed? Rock's the song soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,--few flowers awaken there: Quiet in its cleft broods--what the after-age Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage. [Footnote: _Epilogue to the Dramatic Idyls_. The same thought is in the sonnet, "I ask not for those thoughts that sudden leap," by James Russell Lowell, and _Overnight, a Rose_, by Caroline Giltiman.] Is it possible that the one epic poem which is a man's life work may be as truly inspired as is the lyric that leaps to his lips with a sudden gush of emotion? Or is it true, as Shelley seems to aver that such a poem is never an ideal unity, but a collection of inspired lines and phrases connected "by the intertexture of conventional phrases?" [Footnote: _The Defense of Poetry_.] It may be that the latter view seems truer to us only because we misunderstand the manner in which inspiration is limited. Possibly poets bewail the incompleteness of the flash which is revealed to them, not because they failed to see all the glories of heaven and earth, but because it was a vision merely, and the key to its expression in words was not given them. "Passion and expression are beauty itself," says William Blake, and the passion, so far from making expression inevitable and spontaneous, may by its intensity be an actual handicap, putting the poet into the state "of some fierce thing replete with too much rage." Surely we have no right to condemn the poet because a perfect expression of his thought is not immediately forthcoming. Like any other artist, he works with tools, and is handicapped by their inadequacy. According to Plato, language affords the poet a more flexible implement than any other artist possesses, [Footnote: See _The Republic_, IX, 588 D.] yet, at times, it appears to the maker stubborn enough. To quote Francis Thompson, Our untempered speech descends--poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's brick-layers; Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorize a spirit! [Footnote: _Her Portrait_.] Walt Whitman voices the same complaint: Speech is the twin of my vision: it is unequal to measure itself; It provokes me forever; it says sarcastically, "Walt, you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?" [Footnote: _Song of Myself_.]