I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.” So spoke Socrates, the gadfly of Athens, whose voice rang through the streets and the minds of men like a trumpet of truth. In these words, he revealed a paradox at the heart of poetry: that its greatness does not spring from learned wisdom or reasoned logic, but from a divine flame, an instinct that comes unbidden, a breath of inspiration that seizes the soul. The poet is less a craftsman than a vessel, less a master than a channel through which mystery flows.

The ancients believed this deeply. They said the Muses whispered into the ears of poets, that Homer did not invent the epics but received them from the gods. For how could one man, blind and poor, speak with such thunder as to summon Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus into immortality? Socrates, with the sharpness of his questioning, understood that the poet does not always grasp the meaning of his own lines. Like the prophet, he is seized by something greater than himself. He utters truths he cannot explain, visions he cannot command.

This is why poetry often carries wisdom beyond the poet’s own life. Consider William Blake, a man scorned in his day as mad. He saw angels in trees and wrote of the marriage of heaven and hell. Did he understand fully the depths of what he wrote? Perhaps not. Yet generations later, his words are studied as prophetic revelations of human struggle, imagination, and the divine. His instinct surpassed his intellect, and his inspiration outlived his lifetime. Socrates was right: the poet does not always know—but the poetry knows.

History itself bears witness to this mystery. Joan of Arc, though not a poet in the common sense, spoke in the same spirit. She claimed voices moved her to lead armies, to crown kings, to defy empires. She could not reason like a philosopher, nor write like a scholar, but her words burned with a fire that awakened a nation. Was this not the same force Socrates described—the inspiration of a prophet who speaks truths beyond herself? The poet and the seer are kin; both draw water from the same hidden well.

But let us not mistake Socrates’ words as a dismissal of poets. He did not belittle them; rather, he placed them in the company of the divine. The instinct of the poet is not mere accident, but a sacred gift. It reminds us that not all truths can be captured by logic, not all beauty can be explained by reason. There are dimensions of the soul that cannot be measured, only sung. And when the poet sings, the world is enlarged by mysteries we cannot yet name.

The lesson for us is this: do not demand that every truth be explained. Do not cage beauty in the prison of analysis. Allow space in your life for inspiration, for the sudden flame that speaks through you without asking permission. Trust the stirrings of your instinct, for they may lead you to visions reason could never uncover. As the poets and prophets of old remind us, the divine often enters not through calculation, but through surrender.

Therefore, children of wisdom, let your lives be open to the whisper of the unseen. Do not fear if you cannot always explain what moves you; follow it with humility, as the poet follows the Muse. Speak when the fire burns within you, even if you do not yet understand. For meaning often comes later, but inspiration, once lost, does not return. This is the teaching of Socrates: that the highest truths may pass through us like lightning, leaving us trembling—but also illumined.