eBooks Base 2000

Victorian poets were not less depressed by reflection upon the poet's
lonely life. Arnold strikes the note again and again, most poignantly in
_The Buried Life_, of the poet's sensitive apprehension that all
human intercourse is mockery, and that the gifted soul really dwells in
isolation. _Sordello_ is a monumental record of a genius without
friends. Francis Thompson, with surface lightness, tells us, in _A
Renegade Poet on the Poet:_
He alone of men, though he travel to the pit, picks up no
company by the way; but has a contrivance to avoid scripture,
and find a narrow road to damnation. Indeed, if the majority
of men go to the nether abodes, 'tis the most hopeful argument
I know of his salvation, for 'tis inconceivable that he should
ever do as other men.
One might imagine that in the end the poet's poignant sense of his
isolation might allay his excessive conceit. A yearning for something
beyond himself might lead him to infer a lack in his own nature. Seldom,
however, is this the result of the poet's loneliness.


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