aits may be so broadcast that he is in the position of the
philosopher who, from the remote citadel of his head, disowns his own
toes; nevertheless, a sense of tingling oneness with him is the secret
of nature's attraction. Walt Whitman, who conceives of the poet's
personality as the most pervasive thing in the universe, arrives at his
conviction by the same reflection as that of Keats, telling us,

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.

Perhaps Alice Meynell has best expressed the phenomenon, in a sonnet
called _The Love of Narcissus:_

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
The poet trembles at his own long gaze
That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver
With his fair image facing him forever:
The music that he listens to betrays
His own heart to his ears: by trackless ways
His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavor.
His dreams are far among the silent hills;
His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain;
With winds at night vague recognition thrills
His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;
He knows again his mirth in mountain rills,
His weary tears that touch him in the rain.

Possibly we may concede that his fusion with all nature renders the
poet's personality so diaphanous that his presence is unobtrusive in
poetry of ideas, but we may still object to his thrusting himself into
realistic poetry. Shelley's poet-heroes we will tolerate, as translucent
mediums of his thought, but we are not inclined to accept Byron's, when
we seek a panoramic view of this world. Poetry gains manifold
representation of life, we argue, in proportion as the author represses
his personal bias, and approximates the objective view that a scientist
gives. We cannot but sympathize with Sidney Lanier's complaint against
"your cold jellyfish poets that wrinkle themselves about a pebble of a
theme and let us see it through their substance, as if that were a great
feat." [Footnote: _Poem Outlines._]

In answer, champions of the ubiquitous poet in recent realistic verse
may point to the _Canterbury Tales,_ and show us Chaucer ambling
along with the other pilgrims. His presence, they remind us, instead of
distorting his picture of fourteenth-century life, lends intimacy to our
view of it. We can only feebly retort that, despite his girth, the poet
is the least conspicuous fig