OUR LIVING POETS.

'O sorrowful great gift

Conferred on poets, of a twofold life,

When one life has been found enough for pain!
We, staggering 'neath our burden as mere men,
Being called to stand up straight as demi-gods,
Support the intolerable strain and stress

Of the universal, and send clearly up

With voices broken by the human sob,

Our poems to find rhymes among the stars!'

E. B. BROWNING.

So they show their relations to me, and I accept them;

They bring me tokens of myself-they evince them plainly in

their possession.'

WALT WHITMAN.

AN ESSAY IN CRITICISM

BY

H. BUXTON FORMAN

LONDON

TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST., STRAND

1871

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