But still our classification is
inadequate. Is Browning the expositor of the gregarious poet? It is true
that he feels it necessary for the singer to "look upon men and their
cares and hopes and fears and joys." [Footnote: _Pauline_.] But he
makes Sordello flee like a hunted creature back to Goito and solitude in
quest of renewed inspiration. Is Arnold the expositor of the solitary
poet? True, he urges him to fly from "the strange disease of modern
life". [Footnote: _The Scholar Gypsy_.] Yet he preaches that the
duty of the poet is
to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
[Footnote: _Resignation_.]
Within the romantic period the same phenomenon is evident. Does
Wordsworth paint the ideal poet dwelling apart from human distractions?
Yet he declares that his deepest insight is gained by listening to "the
still sad music of humanity". In Keats, Shelley, Byron, the same
antithesis of thought is not less evident.
We cannot justly conclude that a compromise between contradictions, an
avoidance of extremes, is what anyone of these poets stands for.
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