"] Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats was unflinching in this
particular. The Brownings subscribed to the doctrine. Tennyson's
allegiance to scientific naturalism kept him in doubt for a time, but in
the end his faith in beauty triumphed, and he was ready to praise the
poet as inevitably possessing a nature exquisitely attuned to goodness.
One often runs across dogmatic expression of the doctrine in minor
poetry. W. A. Percy advises the poet,
O singing heart, think not of aught save song,
Beauty can do no wrong.
[Footnote: _Song_.]
Again one hears of the singer,
Pure must he be;
Oh, blessed are the pure; for they shall hear
Where others hear not; see where others see
With a dazed vision,
[Footnote: Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy_.]
and again,
To write a poem, a man should be as pure
As frost-flowers.
[Footnote: T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_.]
Only recently a writer has pictured the poet as one who
Lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty.
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