Yet the fact that Landor was still
singing as he "tottered on into his ninth decade,"--that Browning,
Tennyson, Swinburne, Longfellow, Whittier, Holme's, and Whitman
continued to feel the stir of creation when their hair was hoary, may
have had a genuine influence on younger writers.
Greater significance attaches to the fact that some of the
self-revealing verse lamenting the decay of inspiration in old age is
equivocal, as Landor's
Dull is my verse: not even thou
Who movest many cares away
From this lone breast and weary brow
Canst make, as once, its fountains play;
No, nor those gentle words that now
Support my heart to hear thee say,
The bird upon the lonely bough
Sings sweetest at the close of day.
It is, of course, even more meaningful when the aged poet, disregarding
convention, frankly asserts the desirability of long life for his race.
Browning, despite the sadness of the poet's age recorded in _Cleon_
and the _Prologue to Aslando_, should doubtless be remembered for
his belief in
The last of life for which the first was made,
as applied to poets as well as to other men.
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