" [Footnote: See E. L. Cary, The
Rossettis, p.79.] To poets themselves however, there appears nothing
incomprehensible about the inevitable rightness of their conduct, for
they have not passed out of the happy stage of Wordsworth's _Ode to
Duty,_
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own felicity.
For the most part, whenever the puritan imagines that the poet has
capitulated, he is mistaken, and the apparent self-denial in the poet's
life is really an exquisite sort of epicureanism. The likelihood of such
misunderstanding by the world is indicated by Browning in _Sordello,_
wherein the hero refuses to taste the ordinary pleasures of life,
because he wishes to enjoy the flavor of the highest pleasure untainted.
He resolves,
The world shall bow to me conceiving all
Man's life, who see its blisses, great and small
Afar--not tasting any; no machine
To exercise my utmost will is mine,
Be mine mere consciousness: Let men perceive
What I could do, a mastery believe
Asserted and established to the throng
By their selected evidence of song,
Which now shall prove, whate'er they are, or seek
To be, I am.
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