University of Virginia Library

The Poet, writing, feels nor heat nor cold
Nor thirst nor hunger as he doth unfold,
While his rich mind is open, from its hoard
The gorgeous pageantry, with which it's stored.
Winter or summer outside matters not;
'Mid winter snows he can enjoy a hot
And peerless day in palm groves of Ceylon,
And, 'mid the scorching desert, can dwell on
The breezy Kentish Cliffs, where he was born,
In all the glory of an April morn.
And, though not rich enough to keep a wife,
Omnipresent in day-dreams of his life
He can have some pure image heavenly bright,
Some woman, of a dazzling grace and light
Denied to kings, almost as much imbued
With life as if she were real flesh and blood.
He wants no worldly store of costly things,
For he can have for the imaginings,
In turn, the fancifulness of Japan,
The glow of Ind, old art Italian
Or English luxury. His home can be
By some wild fiord of the northern sea,
Or in the peerless lands neath southern skies
Peopled by English blood and enterprise.
His house can be some ancient Gothic keep
Or wide verandahed bungalow, where sleep
Reigns through the fiery middle of the day.
Alone, his converse can be grave or gay;
And he is in best company alone,
With none to interrupt the magic tone
Belled from within, a kind of mystic chime
Rung by the fancy to the ear of time.
Give him enough to clothe himself and feed
Without his care, and he is rich indeed,
Able to revel when they both so choose,
In undisturbed communion with his Muse.
Dependence is his foul fiend, and restraint,
To have to listen to one drear complaint,
To finish long and uncongenial tasks,
To leave his Muse, when some small tyrant asks.
Freedom is aye the burden of his song,
For he is left one of the common throng
If from constraint and care he is not free
To give himself up to his phantasy.
But it is hard for woman, who is real,
To wed one ever wooing the ideal,
To have the few brief minutes when, tired out,
He cannot follow the will-o'-the-wisp about,
To have him in his uncongenial moods,
When he is unfit for his solitudes,
To live on crumbs of comfort, which may fall
From the rich table, where he feasts with all
The grand guests of his fancy—go through life
More as his children's mother than his wife.
For if a woman is a poet's ideal
His Muse is ever worsted by the real,
And all the poetry, which would have gone
Into his written poems, is lavished on
His poem-life, known only to himself
And his soul's Queen; and when laid on the shelf
After his passionate life-time, lost for aye,
Unless some friend who knew him in his day,
Falls back on that life-poem for the plot
Of a romance, writing what he wrote not
But lived. We cannot in this world have both
To indulge in the bright intercourse of youth
And also haunt the shady cloisters where
There lurks an inspiration in the air.
The Muse's husband cannot have a wife,
Like other men, the essence of his life.