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Book, page 41 / 276 Or fountain in a noonday grove. [Footnote: _The Poet's Epitaph_.] In American verse Wordsworth's mood is, of course, reflected in Bryant, and it appears in the poetry of most of Bryant's contemporaries. Longfellow caused the poet to boast that he "had no friends, and needed none." [Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.] Emerson expressed the same mood frankly. He takes civil leave of mankind: Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood, To fetch his word to men. [Footnote: _The Apology_.] He points out the idiosyncrasy of the poet: Men consort in camp and town, But the poet dwells alone. [Footnote: _Saadi_.] Thus he works up to his climactic statement regarding the amplitude of the poet's personality: I have no brothers and no peers And the dearest interferes; When I would spend a lonely day, Sun and moon are in my way. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] Although the poet's egotism would seem logically to cause him to find his chief pleasure in undisturbed communion with himself, still this picture of the poet delighting in solitude cannot be said to follow, usually, upon his banishment from society. For the most part the poet is characterized by an insatiable yearning for affection, and by the stupidity and hostility of other men he is driven into proud loneliness, even while his heart thirsts for companionship.[Footnote: See John Clare, _The Stranger, The Peasant Poet, I Am_; James Gates Percival, _The Bard_; Joseph Rodman Drake, _Brorix_ (1847); Thomas Buchanan Reade, _My Heritage_; Whittier, _The Tent on the Beach_; Mrs. Frances Gage,
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