But one is inclined to question the justice of Browning's charge, at least so far as it applies peculiarly to the poet. Logically, he should devote himself to sense-blinded humanity, not reluctantly, like the philosopher descending to a gloomy cave which is not his natural habitat, but eagerly, since the poet is dependent upon sense as well as spirit for his vision. "This is the privilege of beauty," says Plato, "that, being the loveliest of the ideas, she is also the most palpable to sight." [Footnote: _Phaedrus_.] Accordingly the poet has no horror of physical vision as a bondage, but he is fired with an enthusiasm to make the world of sense a more transparent medium of beauty. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with the poet's humanitarian aspect, see Bowles, _The Visionary Boy_, _On the Death of the Rev. Benwell_; Wordsworth, _The Poet and the Caged Turtle Dove_; Arnold, _Heine's Grave_; George Eliot, _O May I Join the Choir Invisible_; Lewis Morris, _Food Of Song_; George Meredith, _Milton_; Bulwer Lytton, _Milton_; James Thomson, B. V., _Shelley_; Swinburne, _Centenary of Landor_, _Victor Hugo_, _Victor Hugo in 1877_, _Ben Jonson_, _Thomas Decker_; Whittier, _To J. P._, and _The Tent on the Beach_; J. R. Lowell, _To The Memory of Hood_; O. W. Holmes, _At a Meeting of the Burns Club_; Emerson, _Solution_; R. Realf, _Of Liberty and Charity_; W. H. Burleigh, _Shelley_; T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_; Eugene Field, _Poet and King_; C. W. Hubner, _The Poet_; J. H. West, _O Story Teller Poet_; Gerald Massey, _To Hood Who Sang the Song of the Shirt_; Bayard Taylor, _A Friend's Greeting to Whittier_; Sidney Lanier, _Wagner_, _Clover_; C. A. Pierce, _The Poet's Ideal_; E. Markham, _The Bard_, _A Comrade Calling Back_, _An April Greeting_; G. L. Raymond, _A Life in Song_; Richard Gilder, _The City_, _The Dead Poet_; E. L. Cox, _The Master_, _Overture_; R. C. Robbins, _Wordsworth_; Carl McDonald, _A Poet's Epitaph_.] It is inevitable that every poet's feeling for the world should be that of Shelley, who says to the spirit of beauty, Never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery. [Footnote: _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_.] For, unlike the philosopher, the poet has never departed from the world of sense, and it is hallowed to him as the incarnation of beauty. Therefore he is eager to make other men ever more and more transparent embodiments of their true selves, in order that, gazing upon them, the poet may have ever deeper inspiration. This is the central allegory in _Enydmion_, that the poet must learn to help humanity before the mystery of poetship shall be unlocked to him. Browning comments to this effect upon Bordello's unwillingness to meet the world: But all is changed the moment you descry Mankind as half yourself. Matthew Arnold is the sternest of modern poets, perhaps, in pointing out the poet's responsibility to humanity: