eBooks Base 2000

[Footnote: _Hymn in Honour of Beauty_.]
What an absurd test! one is likely to exclaim, thinking of a swarthy
Sappho, a fat Chaucer, a bald Shakespeare, a runt Pope, a club-footed
Byron, and so on, almost _ad infinitum_. Would not a survey of notable
geniuses rather indicate that the poet's dreams arise because he is like
the sensitive plant of Shelley's allegory, which
Desires what it hath not, the beautiful?[Footnote: _The Sensitive
Plant_.]
Spenser himself foresaw our objections and felt obliged to modify his
pronouncement, admitting--
Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drownd,
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness of the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground
That will not yield unto her form's direction,
But is preformed with some foul imperfection.
But the modern poet is not likely to yield his point so easily as does
Spenser. Rather he will cast aside historical records as spurious, and
insist that all genuine poets have been beautiful.


Pages:
79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103