So answered I, continuing, 'If it please,
Majestic shadow, tell me: sure not all
Those melodies sung into the world's ear
Are useless: sure a poet is a sage,
A humanist, physician to all men.
That I am none I feel, as vultures feel
They are no birds when eagls are abroad,
What am i then? Thou spakest of my tribe:
What tribe?' --the tall dhade veiled in drooping white
Then spake, so much more earnest, that the breath
Moved the thin linen folds that drooping hung
About a golden censer from the hand
Pendent. --'Art thou not of the dreamer tribe?
The poet and the dreamer are distinct,
Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes.
The one pours out a balm upon the world,
The other vexes it'....
... Then shouted I,
Spite of myself, and with a Pythia's spleen,
'Apollo! faded, far-flown Apollo!
Where is thy misty pestilence to creep
Into the dwellings, through the door cranies,
Of all mock lyrists, large self-worshippers
And careless hectorers in proud bad verse....
~ John Keats, The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream
