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Book, page 111 / 276 the same theme are the following: Amelia Josephine Burr, _Anne Hathaway's Cottage_ (1914); C. J. Druce, _The Dark Lady to Shakespeare_ (1919); Karle Wilson Baker, _Keats and Fanny Brawne_ (1919); James B. Kenyon, _Phaon concerning Sappho_ (1920).] Since the poet's soul is more beautiful than the souls of other men, it follows that he cannot love at all except, in a sense, by virtue of the fact that he is easily deceived. Here is another explanation of the transience of his affections,--in his horrified recoil from an unworthy object that he has idealized. This blindness to sensuality is accounted for by Plato in the figure, "The lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this." [Footnote: _Phaedrus_, 255.] [Footnote: Browning shows the poet, with his eyes open, loving an unworthy form, in _Time's Revenges_.] This is the figure used in Sara Teasdale's little poem, _The Star_, which says to the pool, O wondrous deep, I love you, I give you my light to keep. Oh, more profound than the moving sea, That never has shown myself to me. * * * * * But out of the woods as night grew cool A brown pig came to the little pool; It grunted and splashed and waded in And the deepest place but reached its chin. The tragedy in such love is the theme of Alfred Noyes' poem on Marlowe, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_. The dramatist comes to London as a young boy, full of high visions and faith in human nature. His innocence makes him easy prey of a notorious woman: In her treacherous eyes, As in dark pools the mirrored stars will gleam, Here did he see his own eternal skies. But, since his love is wholly spiritual, it dies on the instant of her revelation of her character: Clasped in the bitter grave of that sweet clay, Wedded and one with it, he moaned.
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