d become the sole preoccupation of the
future poet. I will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of
his principal preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery
piece of mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of
me alike. The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn
writers of the imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is
the only safeguard against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But
although the ivory tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although
the poets may be strongly recommended to prolong their _villeggiatura_
there, it should not be the year-long habitation of any healthy
intelligence.

I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending
more and more completely for artistic effect upon an "effusion of
natural sensibility," will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be
tempted, in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to
draw farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap
his singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat
his readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our
successors must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not
merely sees nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I
am not concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy;
the moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that
this unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic
effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by
this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not
prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a
writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of
his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on
the positive value of his verse.

The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to band
themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the
reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and
recondite mysteries--it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The
claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the
world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely
sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for
the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dant