No man is pure poet, he admits, but in proportion as he approaches perfect artistry, his life is purified. Shelley is expressing the beliefs of practically all artists when he says, "The greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men; and the exceptions, as they regard those who possess the poetical faculty in a high, yet an inferior degree, will be found upon consideration to confirm, rather than to destroy, the rule." [Footnote: _The Defense of Poetry._] Sidney Lanier's verse expresses this argument of Shelley precisely. In _The Crystal,_ Lanier indicates that the ideal poet has never been embodied. Pointing out the faults of his favorite poets, he contrasts their muddy characters with the perfect purity of Christ. And in _Life and Song_ he repeats the same idea: None of the singers ever yet Has wholly lived his minstrelsy, Or truly sung his true, true thought. Philosophers may retort that this imperfection in the singer's life arises not merely from the inevitable difference between the lover and the beauty which he loves, but from the fact that the object of the poet's love is not really that highest beauty which is identical with the good. Poets are content with the "many beautiful," Plato charges, instead of pressing on to discover the "one beautiful," [Footnote: Republic, VI, 507B.]--that is, they are ravished by the beauty of the senses, rather than by the beauty of the ideal. Possibly this is true. We have had, in recent verse, a sympathetic expression of the final step in Plato's ascent to absolute beauty, hence to absolute virtue. It is significant, however, that this verse is in the nature of a farewell to verse writing. In _The Symbol Seduces,_ "A. E." exclaims, I leave For Beauty, Beauty's rarest flower, For Truth, the lips that ne'er deceive; For Love, I leave Love's haunted bower. But this is exactly what the poet, as poet, cannot do. It may be, as Plato declared, that he is missing the supreme value of life by clinging to the "many beautiful," instead of the "one beautiful," but if he does not do so, all the colour of his poetical garment falls away from him, and he becomes pure philosopher. There is an infinite promise in the imperfection of the physical world that fascinates the poet. Life is to him "a dome of many colored glass" that reveals, yet stains, "the white radiance of eternity." If it were possible for him to gaze upon beauty apart from her sensuous embodiment, it is doubtful if he would find her ravishing.