into the grass with folded wings.
[Footnote: _The Silence of the Poets._]

This pleasing idea has been fostered in us by poems of appeal to silent
singers. [Footnote: See Swinburne, _A Ballad of Appeal to Christina
Rossetti_; and Francis Thompson, _To a Poet Breaking Silence_.]
But we have manifold confessions that it is not commonly thus with the
non-productive poet. Not merely do we possess many requiems sung by
erst-while makers over their departed gift, [Footnote: See especially
Scott, _Farewell to the Muse_; Kirke White, _Hushed is the Lyre_;
Landor, _Dull is My Verse_, and _To Wordsworth_; James Thomson, B. V.,
_The Fire that Filled My Heart of Old_, and _The Poet and the Muse_;
Joaquin Miller, _Vale_; Andrew Lang, _The Poet's Apology_; Francis
Thompson, _The Cloud's Swan Song_.] but there is much verse indicating
that, even in the poet's prime, his genius is subject to a mysterious
ebb and flow. [Footnote: See Burns, _Second Epistle to Lapraik_; Keats,
_To My Brother George_; Winthrop Mackworth Praed, _Letter from Eaton_;
William Cullen Bryant, _The Poet_; Oliver Wendell Holmes, _Invita
Minerva_; Emerson, _The Poet, Merlin_; James Gates Percival, _Awake My
Lyre_, _Invocation_; J. H. West, _To the Muse_, _After Silence_; Robert
Louis Stevenson, _The Laureate to an Academy Class Dinner_; Alice
Meynell, _To one Poem in Silent Time_; Austin Dobson, _A Garden Idyl_;
James Stevens, _A Reply_; Richard Middleton, _The Artist_; Franklin
Henry Giddings, _Song_; Benjamin R. C. Low, _Inspiration_; Robert
Haven Schauffler, _The Wonderful Hour_; Henry A. Beers, _The Thankless
Muse_; Karl Wilson Baker, _Days_.] Though he has faith that he is not
"widowed of his muse," [Footnote: See Francis Thompson, _The Cloud's
Swan Song_.] she yet torments him with all the ways of a coquette, so
that he sadly assures us his mistress "is sweet to win, but bitter to
keep." [Footnote: C. G. Roberts, _Ballade of the Poet's Thought_.] The
times when she solaces him may be pitifully infrequent. Rossetti, musing
over Coleridge, says that his inspired moments were

Like desert pools that show the stars
Once in long leagues.
[Footnote: _Sonnet to Coleridge_.]

Yet, even so, upon such moments of insight rest all the poet's claims
for his superior personality. It is the potential greatness enabling him
at times to have speech with the gods that makes the rest of his life
sacred. Emerson is more outspoken than most poets; he is not perhaps at
v