Your course of love, and Ariel still

Has track'd your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot

This is all remember'd not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprison'd for some fault of his,
In a body like a grave -

From you he only dares to crave
For his service and his sorrow
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.

The artist who this idol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought,
Fell'd a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rock'd in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of autumn past,
And some of spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree-
Oh that such our death may be !
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again :

From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star,

The artist wrought this loved Guitar;

And taught it justly to reply

To all who question skilfully

In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamour'd tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells:
For it had learnt all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains,
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,

The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain and breathing dew,

And airs of evening; and it knew

That seldom-heard mysterious sound

Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way:
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as it answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For our beloved Friend alone.

Shelley.

Thus the imagination sees, contemplates, and creates such an individual conception that it can stand for a most general truth. It idealizes, it gives life and feeling to every object. It compares the unknown with the known; makes the seen a window through which the mind beholds the unseen. It surrounds or

environs; it shows the kinship of things; it paints a picture which blends harmoniously into one vision; it makes the desert a dwelling-place; it fathoms the life of the universe, and enters the most secret chambers of the human soul.

PROBLEM XII. Read a variety of passages, and exercise the many diverse actions of the imagination.

THE mountains rose, the valleys sank

Unto the place which thou hadst founded for them.

...

THE stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.

THOU dost preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.

THE winds come to me from the fields of sleep.

THERE is a budding morrow in midnight.

THIS is the very heart of the woods all round
Mountain-like heaped above us; yet even here
One pond of water gleams; far off the river
Sweeps like a sea, barred out from land; but one, -
One thin, clear sheet has over-leaped and wound
Into this silent depth, which gained, it lies
Still, as but let by sufferance; the trees bend

O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl.

Wordsworth.

Keats.

THE LOST CHURCH.

OFT in the forest far one hears

A passing sound of distant bells;

Nor legends old nor human wit

Can tell us whence the music swells.

From the Lost Church, 't is thought, that soft

Faint ringing cometh on the wind;

Once many pilgrims trod the path,
But no one now the way can find.

Not long since, deep into the wood

I stray'd, where path was none to see:
Weary of human wickedness,

My heart to God yearn'd longingly.

There, through the silent wilderness,
Again I heard the sweet bells stealing,

Ever, as higher yearn'd my heart,

The nearer and the louder pealing.

Browning.

What then, in silent prayerful awe,

Of majesty I saw reveal'd,

What heard of sound more blissful far

Than aught to human ear unseal'd,
Lies not within the might of words;

Yet whoso longeth for such good,

Let him take heed unto the bells

That ring in whispers through the wood.

Uhland.

VIII. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IMAGINATION.

THE most imaginative poem may be turned into commonplace prose if read without a proper realization of its spirit. The imagination does not act mechanically or by artificial analysis. It is synthetic, natural, and simple. No rules can be framed to interpret poetry, or to understand its nature, without proper imaginative and emotional exercise. Imagination appeals to imagination, and can be interpreted only by imagination. It acts by intuition and intensity of gaze, not by reasoning. It gives a more essential truth than can be seized by the eye. It does not accumulate accidents or multiply details, but penetrates immediately to the life and soul.

Il Penseroso.

SWEET bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among

I woo, to hear thy even-song;

And missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering Moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray

Through the heaven's wide, pathless way,

And oft, as if her head she bow'd,

Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Milton.

Here we perceive no process of reasoning about the moon being lost in heaven; we feel the immediate creative action of the mind.