heads of the crowd; perhaps most of us can recall something of how it feels inside them. The most coy have known the itch to swagger, the most staid have longed to shout from the house-top, and modesty itself has desired to stand forth naked and unashamed; so that a deep and widespread welcome greets these manifestations even among those who dare not avow their approval and whose lives would contradict them if they did. Wordsworth himself confessed that he had not written love poems because if he had done so they would have been too warm for publication.
"All true speech and large avowal
Which the jealous soul concedes,
All man's heart that brooks bestowal,
All frank faith which passion breeds."
are of the very essence of poetry, and will be cherished by every loyal nature. Propriety is forbidden to intervene when soul communes with soul, her sphere is downstairs in the world of half relations and approximate intercourse. But in proportion as you claim to go naked, you must keep near to the heart of things, and make the very truth your inseparable companion. Anything off-hand, anything insensitive or not quite alive offends these communicants, like the touch of a corpse. Humbleness like that of a child is born from this intensity. Any thought of the myriad eyes that overpeer a stage should be impossible; the world is forgotten when the spirit dances naked in the light to which joy entrusts it—tender joy for whom the damage of the pale green, ruby-eyed, lace-winged fly is a calamity to avert with tears and supplications. "Everything that lives is holy." If Seeger lives in his poetry, everything else passes like a ghost, like a reference only: his one imperious desire is to cast a personal spell upon us all. Will not something unmistakably itself arrest this fervid eloquence that deals in clouds and stars
