The Poet 213
blocked from having what they most desire: true conjunction with
the parent of the other sex. Children, to Freud, want to be adults.
They play only one game: they play at being grownups who can sat-
isfy their desires (in displaced forms only of course). When Words-
worth sees a child playing at being grown he is sad, - for that child
is, he tells us, “blindly with [his] blessedness at strife.”
And Nature? For Freud, Nature is Darwinian Nature, red in tooth
and claw. Freud is respectful of the natu ral—no doubt about that.
We must not outrage Nature by renouncing too many of its impulses
in the interest of civilization. But Freud never imagines that Nature
could be a source of refi ning wisdom and moral guidance, as Words-
worth does when he proclaims that he grew up in the natu ral
world, “fostered alike by beauty and by fear.” Nature, childhood,
dreams (and drugs): all feed the Romantic imagination. But what
inspires the most original of the Romantic poets and (perhaps)
brings a new ideal into the world is surely Love. “Release yourself
from misery,” the once- grand Peter Townsend once chanted: “there’s
only one thing gonna set you free.” (Saint Paul is confi rmed and
turned inside out.) “And that’s my love.” (What else could it be?)
“Let my love open the door, to your heart.”
How many women and men have acquired only half the wisdom
of the Romantics? They feel that falling in love and having their love
returned will make them happy. But happiness, from the perspec-
tive of Soul, is a delusion of Self. Happiness to the common mind
is all about beautiful stasis. Love that is taken up fully into the imag-
ination propels the individual forward to more work and more
works. True love does not rest in complacency.
The centrality of love to the Romantics has been surprisingly
little remarked by scholars. There is much talk about subjects and
objects, and about the Romantic image, and more recently about the
gender politics of the poets. But little is said about love and the
Romantic endeavor. The man or woman in the street who calls