To poets who do not subscribe to Emerson's belief in one-sided attachments, Alexander Smith's _A Life Drama_ is a treasury of suggestions as to devices by which the poet's lady may be kept at sufficient distance to be useful. With the aid of intercalations Smith exhibits the poet removed from his lady by scornful rejection, by parental restraint, by an unhappy marriage, by self-reproach, and by death. All these devices have been popular in our poetry. The lady's marriage is seldom felt to be an insuperable barrier to love, though it is effective in removing her to a suitable distance for idealization. The poet's worship is so supersensual as to be inoffensive. To confine ourselves to poetic dramas treating historical poets,--Beatrice,[Footnote: G. L. Raymond's and S. K. Wiley's dramas, _Dante_, and _Dante and Beatrice_.] Laura, [Footnote: Cale Young Rice, _A Night in Avignon_.] Vittoria Colonna, [Footnote: Longfellow, _Michael Angelo_.] and Alison [Footnote: Peabody, _Marlowe_.] are all married to one man while inspiring another. A characteristic autobiographical love poem of this type, is that of Francis Thompson, who asserts the ideality of the poet's affection in his reference to This soul which on thy soul is laid, As maid's breast upon breast of maid. [Footnote: See also _Ad Amicam_, _Her Portrait_, _Manus Animon Pinxit_.] There is no other barrier that so elevates love as does death. Translation of love into Platonic idealism is then almost inevitable. Alexander Smith describes the change accomplished by the death of the poet's sweetheart: Two passions dwelt at once within his soul, Like eve and sunset dwelling in one sky. And as the sunset dies along the west, Eve higher lifts her front of trembling stars Till she is seated in the middle sky, So gradual one passion slowly died And from its death the other drew fresh life, Until 'twas seated in the soul alone, The dead was love, the living, poetry. The mystic merging of Beatrice into ideal beauty is, of course, mentioned often in nineteenth century poetry, most sympathetically, perhaps, by Rossetti. [Footnote: See _On the Vita Nuova of Dante_; also _Dante at Verona_.] Much the same kind of translation is described in _Vane's Story_, by James Thomson, B.V., which appears to be a sort of mystic autobiography.