with the pain and the fates of men, to share the agony:—
The wise bards also
Behold and sing.
But oh, what labour!
O prince, what pain!
The gods exact this price for the gift of song, that the poets become what they sing.
The poet, it is often said, by depth of sympathy, suffers more than other men, a part of their pains as well as his own. And this is a self-flattering theory that poets hug to their breast. I have little sympathy with the conceit. If the poet, being more sensitive than other men, feel the pain and ugliness of the world sorely, he also is just as sensitive to its joy and beauty; and he has greater rapture than other men. All things are set over one against another, and the poet has no business to enlarge on his pain and to ignore his joy. He is, in reality, very well paid for his trouble. Moreover, he has a great advantage over other men. There are thousands just as sensitive as he, who are obliged to suffer in silence; but the poet, having the gift of expression, can shape his pain into words, cry loudly his lyric cry, make the world the sympathetic witness of his woes; and then, having expressed his trouble, forget it, or get rid of it and go on, if that please him, to shiver with another pain, shape it in its turn, and forget it—and this he can do all his life long. It is a
