e.

It is doubtless natural that the passionate romantic poets insisted upon
the poet's youth, while the thoughtful Victorians often thought of himas
old. For one is born with nerves, and it does not take long for them
to wear out; on the other hand a great deal of experience is required
before one can even begin to think significantly. Accordingly one is not
surprised, in the turbulent times of Elizabeth, to find Shakespeare, at
thirty, asserting,

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
As on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

and conversely it seems fitting that a _De Senectute_ should come
from an Augustan period. As for the attitude toward age of our own
day,--the detestation of age expressed by Alan Seeger [Footnote: See
_There Was a Youth Around Whose Early Way_.] and Rupert Brooke,
[Footnote: See _The Funeral of Youth: Threnody_.]--the complaint of
Francis Ledwidge, at twenty-six, that years are robbing him of his
inspiration, [Footnote: See _Growing Old, Youth_.]--that, to their
future readers, will only mean that they lived in days of much feeling
and action, and that they died young. [Footnote: One of the war poets,
Joyce Kilmer, was already changing his attitude at thirty. Compare his
juvenile verse, "It is not good for poets to grow old," with the later
poem, _Old Poets_.] As the world subsides, after its cataclysm,
into contemplative revery, it is inevitable that poets will, for a time,
once more conceive as their ideal, not a singer aflame with youth and
passion, but a poet of rich experience and profound reflection,

White-bearded and with eyes that look afar
From their still region of perpetual snow,
Beyond the little smokes and stirs of men.
[Footnote: James Russell Lowell, _Thorwald's Lay_.]

CHAPTER III.

THE POET AS LOVER

Do the _Phaedrus_ and the _Symposium_ leave anything to be said on the
relationship of love and poetry? In the last analysis, probably not. The
poet, however, is not one to keep silence because of a dearth of new
philosophical conceptions. As he discovers, with ever fresh wonder, the
power of love as muse, each new poet, in turn, is wont to pour his
gratitude for his inspiration into song, undeterred by the fact that
love has received many encomiums before.

It is not strange that this hymn should be broken by rude taunts on the
part of the uninitiated.

Saynt Idiote, Lord of these foles alle,

Chaucer's Troilus called Love, long ago, and the gen