"Ever when slept the poet his dreams were music," [Footnote: _The
Poet's Sleep_.] says Richard Gilder, and the line seems trite to us.
There was surely no reason why Keats' title, _Sleep and Poetry_,
should have appeared ludicrous to his critics, for from the time of
Caedmon onward English writers have been sensitive to a connection here.
The stereotyped device of making poetry a dream vision, so popular in
the middle ages,--and even the prominence of _Night Thoughts_ in
eighteenth century verse--testify that a coupling of poetry and sleep
has always seemed natural to poets. Coleridge, [Footnote: See his
account of the composition of _Kubla Khan_.] Keats, Shelley, [Footnote:
See _Alastor_, and _Prince Athanase_. See also Edmund Gosse,
_Swinburne_, p. 29, where Swinburne says he produced the first three
stanzas of _A Vision of Spring_ in his sleep.]--it is the romanticists
who seem to have depended most upon sleep as bringer of inspiration. And
once more, it is Shelley who shows himself most keenly aware that,
asleep or waking, the poet feels his afflatus coming in the same manner.
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