One might think that the poet has less cause for rebellion against the
flesh than have other men, inasmuch as the bonds that enthrall feebler
spirits seem to have no power upon him. A blind Homer, a mad Tasso, a
derelict Villon, an invalid Pope, most wonderful of all--a woman Sappho,
suggest that the differences in earthly tabernacles upon which most of
us lay stress are negligible to the poet, whose burning genius can
consume all fetters of heredity, sex, health, environment and material
endowment. Yet in his soberest moments the poet is wont to confess that
there are varying degrees in the handicap which genius suffers in the
mid-earth life; in fact ever since the romantic movement roused in him
an intense curiosity as to his own nature, he has reflected a good deal
on the question of what earthly conditions will least cabin and confine
his spirit.
Apparently the problem of heredity is too involved to stir him to
attempted solution. If to make a gentleman one must begin with his
grandfather, surely to make a poet one must begin with the race, and in
poems even of such bulk as the _Prelude_ one does not find a complete
analysis of the singer's forbears.
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