[Footnote: For treatment of the question
of the poet's sex in American verse by women, see Emma Lazarus,
_Echoes_; Olive Dargan, _Ye Who are to Sing_.]
Of only less vital concern to poets than the question of the poet's
physical constitution is the problem of his environment. Where will the
chains of mortality least hamper his aspiring spirit?
In answer, one is haunted by the line,
I too was born in Arcadia.
Still, this is not the answer that poets would make in all periods. In
the eighteenth century, for example, though a stereotyped conception of
the shepherd poet ruled,--as witness the verses of Hughes, [Footnote:
See _Corydon_.] Collins, [Footnote: See _Selim, or the Shepherd's
Moral_.] and Thomson,[Footnote: See _Pastoral on the Death of
Daemon_.]--it is obvious that these gentlemen were in no literal
sense expressing their views on the poet's habitat. It was hardly
necessary for Thomas Hood to parody their efforts in his eclogues giving
a broadly realistic turn to shepherds assuming the singing robes.
[Footnote: See _Huggins and Duggins_, and _The Forlorn Shepherd's
Complaint_.
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