Therefore, an external obstacle is usually
made to intervene.
As often as not, this obstacle is the indifference of the beloved. One
finds rejected poets by the dozens, mourning in the verse of our period.
The sweetheart's reasons are manifold; her suitor's inferior station and
poverty being favorites. But one wonders if the primary reason may not
be the quality of the love offered by the poet, whose extreme humility
and idealization are likely to engender pride and contempt in the lady,
she being unaware that it is the reflection of his own soul that the
poet is worshipping in her. One can feel some sympathy with the lady in
Thomas Hardy's _I Rose Up as My Custom Is_, who, when her lover's
ghost discovers her beside a snoring spouse, confesses that she is
content with her lot:
He makes no quest into my thoughts,
But a poet wants to know
What one has felt from earliest days,
Why one thought not in other ways,
And one's loves of long ago.
It may be, too, that an instinct for protection has something to do with
the lady's rejection, for a recent poet has openly proclaimed the effect
of attaining, in successful love, one step toward absolute beauty:
O beauty, as thy heart o'erflows
In tender yielding unto me,
A vast desire awakes and grows
Unto forgetfulness of thee.
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