I who can scarcely speak my fellows' speech, Love their love or mine own love to them teach, A bastard barred from their inheritance, * * * * * In antre of this lowly body set, Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul. [Footnote: _Sister Songs_.] But the typical poet yearns not downward, but upward, and above him he finds nothing. Therefore reflection upon his loneliness continually draws his attention to the fact that his isolation is an inevitable consequence of his genius,--that he Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foiled searching of mortality. [Footnote: Matthew Arnold, Sonnet, _Shakespeare_.] The poet usually looks for alleviation of his loneliness after death, when he is gathered to the company of his peers, but to the supreme poet he feels that even this satisfaction is denied. The highest genius must exist absolutely in and for itself, the poet-egoist is led to conclude, for it will "remain at heart unread eternally." [Footnote: Thomas Hardy, _To Shakespeare_.] Such is the self-perpetuating principle which appears to insure perennial growth of the poet's egoism. The mystery of inspiration breeds introspection; introspection breeds egoism; egoism breeds pride; pride breeds contempt for other men; contempt for other men breeds hostility and persecution; persecution breeds proud isolation. Finally, isolation breeds deeper introspection, and the poet is ready to start on a second revolution of the egocentric circle. CHAPTER II THE MORTAL COIL If I might dwell where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, sighs Poe, and the envious note vibrates in much of modern song. There is an inconsistency in the poet's attitude,--the same inconsistency that lurks in the most poetical of philosophies. Like Plato, the poet sees this world as the veritable body of his love, Beauty,--and yet it is to him a muddy vesture of decay, and he is ever panting for escape from it as from a prison house. One might think that the poet has less cause for rebellion against the flesh than have other men, inasmuch as the bonds that enthrall feebler spirits seem to have no power upon him. A blind Homer, a mad Tasso, a derelict Villon, an invalid Pope, most wonderful of all--a woman Sappho, suggest that the differences in earthly tabernacles upon which most of us lay stress are negligible to the poet, whose burning genius can consume all fetters of heredity, sex, health, environment and material endowment. Yet in his soberest moments the poet is wont to confess that there are varying degrees in the handicap which genius suffers in the mid-earth life; in fact ever since the romantic movement roused in him an intense curiosity as to his own nature, he has reflected a good deal on the question of what earthly conditions will least cabin and confine his spirit.