The classic conception.--Love as a disturbing factor in composition.--The romantic conception.--Love the source of inspiration.--Fusion of intense passion with repose essential to poetry.--Poetic love and Platonic love synonymous.--Sensual love not suggestive.--The poet's ascent to ideal love.--Analogy with ascent described in Plato's _Symposium_.--Discontent with ephemeralness of passion.--Poetry a means of rendering passion eternal.--Insatiability of the poet's affections.--Idealization of his mistress.--Ideal beauty the real object of his love.--Fickleness.--Its justification.--Advantage in seeing varied aspects of ideal beauty.--Remoteness as an essential factor in ideal love.--Sluggishness resulting from complete content.--Aspiration the poetic attitude.--Abstract love-poetry, consciously addressed to ideal beauty.--Its merits and defects.--The sensuous as well as the ideal indispensable to poetry. IV. THE SPARK FROM HEAVEN Reticence of great geniuses regarding inspiration.--Mystery of inspiration.--The poet's curiosity as to his inspired moments.--Wild desire preceding inspiration.--Sudden arrest rather than satisfaction of desire.--Ecstasy.--Analogy with intoxication.--Attitude of reverence during inspired moments.--Feeling that an outside power is responsible.--Attempts to give a rational account of inspiration.--The theory of the sub-conscious.--Prenatal memory.--Reincarnation of dead geniuses.--Varied conceptions of the spirit inspiring song as the Muse, nature, the spirit of the universe.--The poet's absolute surrender to this power.--Madness.--Contempt for the limitations of the human reason.--Belief in infallibility of inspirations.--Limitations of inspiration.--Transience.--Expression not given from without.--The work of the poet's conscious intelligence.--Need for making the vision intelligible.--Quarrel over the value of hard work. V. THE POET'S MORALITY The poet's reliance upon feeling as sole moral guide.--Attack upon his morals made by philosophers, puritans, philistines.--Professedly wicked poets.--Their rarity.--Revolt against mass-feeling.--The aesthetic appeal of sin.--The morally frail poet, handicapped by susceptibility to passion.--The typical poet's repudiation of immorality.--Feeling that virtue and poetry are inseparable.--Minor explanations for this conviction.--The "poet a poem" theory.--Identity of the good and the beautiful.--The poet's quarrel with the philistine.--The poet's horror of restraint.--The philistine's unfairness to the poet's innocence.--The poet's quarrel with the puritan.--The poet's horror of asceticism.--The poet's quarrel with the philosopher.--Feeling upon which the poet relies allied to Platonic intuition. VI. THE POET'S RELIGION