The poet, to whose mighty heart Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart, Subdues that energy to scan Not his own course, but that of man. Though he move mountains, though his day Be passed on the proud heights of sway, Though he hath loosed a thousand chains, Though he hath borne immortal pains, Action and suffering though he know, He hath not lived, if he lives so. [Footnote: _Resignation_.] It is obvious that in the poet's opinion there is only one means by which he can help humanity, and that is by helping men to express their essential natures; in other words, by setting them free. Liberty is peculiarly the watch-word of the poets. To the philosopher and the moralist, on the contrary, there is no merit in liberty alone. Men must be free before they can seek wisdom or goodness, no doubt, but something beside freedom is needed, they feel, to make men good or evil. But to the poet, beauty and liberty are almost synonymous. If beauty is the heart of the universe (and it must be, the poet argues, since it abides in sense as well as spirit), there is no place for the corrupt will. If men are free, they are expressing their real natures; they are beautiful. Is this our poet's view? But hear Plato: "The tragic poets, being wise men, will forgive us, and any others who live after our manner, if we do not receive them into our state, because they are the eulogists of tyranny." [Footnote: _Republic._] Few enemies of poets nowadays would go so far as to make a charge like this one, though Thomas Peacock, who locked horns with Shelley on the question of poetry, asserted that poets exist only by virtue of their flattery of earth's potentates. [Footnote: See _The Four Ages of Poetry._] Once, it must be confessed, one of the poets themselves brought their name into disrepute. In the heat of his indignation over attacks made upon his friend Southey, Landor was moved to exclaim, If thou hast ever done amiss It was, O Southey, but in this, That, to redeem the lost estate Of the poor Muse, a man so great Abased his laurels where some Georges stood Knee-deep in sludge and ordure, some in blood. Was ever genius but thyself Friend or befriended of a Guelf? But these are insignificant exceptions to the general characterization of the modern poet as liberty-lover. Probably Plato's equanimity would not be upset, even though we presented to him an overwhelming array of evidence bearing upon the modern poet's allegiance to democracy. Certainly, he might say, the modern poet, like the ancient one, reflects the life about him. At the time of the French revolution, or of the world war, when there is a popular outcry against oppression, what is more likely than that the poet's voice should be the loudest in the throng? But as soon as there is a reaction toward monarchical government, poets will again scramble for the post of poet-laureate.