t then content would make us blest.

Shelley, too, eschews wealth, declaring, in _Epipsychidion_,

Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge luxury to waste
The scene it would adorn.

Later poetry is likely to take an even exuberant attitude toward
poverty. [Footnote: See especially verse on the Mermaid group, as
_Tales of the Mermaid Inn_, Alfred Noyes. See also Josephine Preston
Peabody, _The Golden Shoes_; Richard Le Gallienne, _Faery Gold_; J. G.
Saxe, _The Poet to his Garret_; W. W. Gibson, _The Empty Purse_; C. G.
Halpine, _To a Wealthy Amateur Critic_; Simon Kerl, _Ode to Debt, A Leaf
of Autobiography_; Thomas Gordon Hake, _The Poet's Feast_; Dana Burnet,
_In a Garret_; Henry Aylett Sampson, _Stephen Phillips Bankrupt_.] The
poet's wealth of song is so great that he leaves coin to those who wish
it. Indeed he often has a superstitious fear of wealth, lest it take
away his delight in song. In Markham's _The Shoes of Happiness_, only
the poet who is too poor to buy shoes possesses the secret of joy.
With a touching trust in providence, another poet cries,

Starving, still I smile,
Laugh at want and wrong,
He is fed and clothed
To whom God giveth song.
[Footnote: Anne Reeve Aldrich, _A Crowned Poet_.]

It is doubtful indeed that the poet would have his fate averted. Pope's
satirical coupling of want and song, as cause and effect,

One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye,
The cave of Poverty and Poetry.
Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,
Emblem of music caused by emptiness,
[Footnote: _Dunciad_.]

is accepted quite literally by later writers. Emerson's theory of
compensations applies delightfully here as everywhere, and he meditates
on the poet,

The Muse gave special charge
His learning should be deep and large,--
* * * * *
His flesh should feel, his eyes should read
Every maxim of dreadful need.
* * * * *
By want and pain God screeneth him
Till his appointed hour.
[Footnote: _The Poet_.]

It may appear doubtful to us whether the poet has painted ideal
conditions for the nurture of genius in his picture of the poet's
physical frame, his environment, and his material endowment, inasmuch as
the death rate among young bards,--imaginary ones, at least, is
appalling. What can account for it?

In a large percentage of cases, the poet's natural frailty