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"A writer may be many things besides a poet; he may be a warrior like Æschylus, a man of business like Shakespeare, a courtier like Chaucer, or a cosmopolitan philosopher like Gœthe; but the moment the poetic mood is upon him all the trappings of the world with which for years he may have been clothing his soul—the world's knowingness, its cynicism, its self-seeking, its ambition fall away, and the man becomes an inspired child again, with ears attuned to nothing but the whispers of those spirits from the golden age, who according to Hesiod, haunt and bless the degenerate earth."
