Therefore Percy Mackaye makes
Sappho vaunt over the philosopher, Pittacus:
Yours is the living pall,
The aloof and frozen place of listeners
And lookers-on at life. But mine--ah! Mine
The fount of life itself, the burning fount
Pierian. I pity you.
[Footnote: _Sappho and Phaon_, a drama.]
Very likely Pittacus had no answer to Sappho's boast, but when the
average nondescript verse-writer claims that his intuitions are
infinitely superior to the results of scholarly research, the man of
reason is not apt to keep still. And one feels that the poet, in many
cases, has earned such a retort as that recorded by Young:
How proud the poet's billow swells!
The God! the God! his boast:
A boast how vain! what wrecks abound!
Dead bards stench every coast.
[Footnote: _Resignation_.]
There could be no more telling blow against the poet's view of
inspiration than this. Even so pronounced a romanticist as Mrs. Browning
is obliged to admit that the poet cannot always trust his vision. She
muses over the title of poet:
The name
Is royal, and to sign it like a queen
Is what I dare not--though some royal blood
Would seem to tingle in me now and then
With sense of power and ache,--with imposthumes
And manias usual to the race.
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