I cannot hear your songs, O birds, For the witchery of my own.And every human heart Still keeps that golden day And rings the bells of jubilee On its own First of May.
Page 30, note 1. Compare in "The Poet," in the Appendix to the Poems, the verses beginning,—
The gods talk in the breath of the woods,They talk in the shaken pine.
Page 31, note 1. He elsewhere quotes Plato as saying, "The man who is master of himself knocks in vain at the door of Poetry."
Page 31, note 2. In the lecture the following passage belonged here, an earlier version:—
"The Poet adopts in every action the method of Nature, the most direct; believing, that, in the nature of everything, its own check will appear, and save the absurdity of artificial checks…
"The Poet, thus beholding laws, is believer and lover. The world to him is virgin soil. (And the men mean well: it is never too late to do right.) He affirms the applicability of the ideal law to this moment, and to the present knot of affairs. But [parties, lawyers, and] men of the world invariably dispute such an application, as romantic and dangerous. They admit the general truth, but they and their affairs always constitute an exception."
Page 32, note 1. The latter pages of "The Conservative," in Nature, Addresses and Lectures, treat of the attitude towards the problems of his day of the man who follows his ideals.
