Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/147

Rh And of necessity, since he would educate, he must be rough and without compliments:

He is, then, less a poet in the modern sense than a prophet, a vates in the ancient sense. He is not the singer of certain specific things or of a few sentiments: he is the poet of the universal, of the all, of the ensemble.

There are poets who sing only the love of woman, others who sing only the love of nature, others yet who sing only the love of fatherland or of mankind or of themselves. Whitman sings all these loves together, and others as well:

And he has heard the command of the Muse: