The Poet's Poet : essays on the character and mission of the poet as interpreted in English verse of the last one hundred and fifty years

This study surveys English verse across roughly a century and a half to examine how poets portray their own character and mission. It organizes those self-portrayals into recurring themes—ego and solitude, bodily and social origins, love and idealization, sources of inspiration, moral outlook, religious feeling, and claims of practical usefulness—and traces their tensions and affinities. The author weighs major and minor voices, contrasts ecstatic accounts of inspiration with the demands of conscious craft, and considers poets' defenses against moral and social criticism. The analysis aims to show an underlying quest for unity in poets' self-conceptions while acknowledging frequent contradictions.