[Footnote: _The Poet's Epitaph_.]
In American verse Wordsworth's mood is, of course, reflected in Bryant,
and it appears in the poetry of most of Bryant's contemporaries.
Longfellow caused the poet to boast that he "had no friends, and needed
none." [Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.] Emerson expressed the same mood
frankly. He takes civil leave of mankind:
Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood,
To fetch his word to men.
[Footnote: _The Apology_.]
He points out the idiosyncrasy of the poet:
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
[Footnote: _Saadi_.]
Thus he works up to his climactic statement regarding the amplitude of
the poet's personality:
I have no brothers and no peers
And the dearest interferes;
When I would spend a lonely day,
Sun and moon are in my way.
[Footnote: _The Poet_.]
Although the poet's egotism would seem logically to cause him to find
his chief pleasure in undisturbed communion with himself, still this
picture of the poet delighting in solitude cannot be said to follow,
usually, upon his banishment from society.
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