A pantheistic religion is the only one which does not hamper the poet's unconscious and unhampering morality. He refuses to die to this world as Plato's philosopher and the early fathers of the church were urged to do, for it is from the physical world that all his inspiration comes. If he attempts to turn away from it, he is bewildered, as Christina Rossetti was, by a duality in his nature, by The foolishest fond folly of a heart Divided, neither here nor there at rest, That hankers after Heaven, but clings to earth. [Footnote: _Later Life,_ Sonnet 24.] On the other hand, if he tries to content himself with the merely physical aspects of things, he finds that he cannot crush out of his nature a mysticism quite as intense as that of the most ascetic saint. Only a religion which maintains the all-pervasive oneness of both elements in his nature can wholly satisfy him. Not infrequently, poets have given this instinctive faith of theirs a conscious formulation. Coleridge, with his indefatigable quest of the unity underlying "the Objective and Subjective," did so. Shelley devoted a large part of _Prometheus Unbound_ and the conclusion of _Adonais_ to his pantheistic views. Wordsworth never wavered in his worship of the sense world which was yet spiritual, The Being that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, [Footnote: _Hart Leap Well._] and was led to the conclusion, It is my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. [Footnote: _Lines Written in Early Spring._] Tennyson, despite the restlessness of his speculative temper, was ever returning to a pantheistic creed. The same is true of the Brownings. Arnold is, of course, undecided upon the question, and now approves, now rejects the pessimistic view of pantheism expressed in _Empedocles on AEtna,_ in accordance with his change of mood putting the poem in and out of the various editions of his works. But wherever his poetry is most worthy, his worship of nature coincides with Wordsworth's pantheistic faith. Swinburne's _Hertha_ is one of the most thorough going expressions of pantheism. At the present time, as in much of the poetry of the past, the pantheistic feeling is merely implicit. One of the most recent conscious formulations of it is in Le Gallienne's _Natural Religion,_ wherein he explains the grounds of his faith, Up through the mystic deeps of sunny air I cried to God, "Oh Father, art thou there?" Sudden the answer like a flute I heard; It was an angel, though it seemed a bird. On the whole the poet might well wax indignant over the philosopher's charge. It is hardly fair to accuse the poet of being indifferent to the realm of ideas, when, as a matter of fact, he not only tries to establish himself there, but to carry everything else in the universe with him.