...express in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament,...to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He could not sway the crowd but he might appeal to a little...

...both with Gallaher and his wife. Little dreams of being a poet, but even his dreams are unassuming: "If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen," he thinks, and longs to establish a "litde circle of kindred minds." (emphasis added) It's clear to...

...express in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament,...to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He could not sway the crowd, but he might appeal to a little...

...express in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to weigh his sou) to sec if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy: If he could give expression...

...optimistic philosophy of hope for his own writing, writing ironically based on his own melancholy, "a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy" (D 73), as Chandler says. In the same paragraph, the word "melancholy" recurs three times, reinforced...