If the poet's intuitions are false, how does it chance, he inquires, that he has been known, in all periods of the world's history, as a prophet? Shelley says, "Poets are ... the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present," and explains the phenomenon thus: "A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, the one; so far as related to his conceptions, time and place and number are not." [Footnote: _A Defense of Poetry_.] In our period, verse dealing with the Scotch bard is fondest of stressing the immemorial association of the poet and the prophet, and in much of this, the "pretense of superstition" as Shelley calls it, is kept up, that the poet can foretell specific happenings. [Footnote: See, for example, Gray, _The Bard_; Scott, _The Lady of the Lake_, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _Thomas the Rhymer_; Campbell, _Lochiel's Warning_.] But we have many poems that express a broader conception of the poet's gift of prophecy. [Footnote: See William Blake, Introduction to _Songs of Experience_, _Hear the Voice of the Bard_; Crabbe, _The Candidate_; Landor, _Dante_; Barry Cornwall, _The Prophet_; Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_; Coventry Patmore, _Prophets Who Cannot Sing_; J. R. Lowell, _Massaccio_, Sonnet XVIII; Owen Meredith, _The Prophet_; W. H. Burleigh, _Shelley_; O. W. Holmes, _Shakespeare_; T. H. Olivers, _The Poet_, _Dante_; Alfred Austin, _The Poet's Corner_; Swinburne, _The Statue of Victor Hugo_; Herbert Trench, _Stanzas on Poetry_.] Holmes' view is typical: We call those poets who are first to mark Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,-- Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark While others only note that day is gone; For them the Lord of light the curtain rent That veils the firmament. [Footnote: _Shakespeare_.] Most of these poems account for the premonitions of the poet as Shelley does; as a more recent poet has phrased it: Strange hints Of things past, present and to come there lie Sealed in the magic pages of that music, Which, laying hold on universal laws, Ranges beyond these mud-walls of the flesh. [Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.] The poet's defense is not finished when he establishes the truth of his vision. How shall the world be served, he is challenged, even though it be true that the poet's dreams are of reality? Plato demanded of his philosophers that they return to the cave of sense, after they had seen the heavenly vision, and free the slaves there. Is the poet willing to do this? It has been charged that he is not. Browning muses, Ah, but to find A certain mood enervate such a mind, Counsel it slumber in the solitude Thus reached, nor, stooping, task for mankind's good Its nature just, as life and time accord. --Too narrow an arena to reward Emprize--the world's occasion worthless since Not absolutely fitted to evince Its mastery! [Footnote: _Sordello_.]