ployed are not only vivid, but are endowed with emotional significance, and so make appeal not only to the visualizing power of the reader but to his heart and soul and spiritual nature.

The following lines represent a much higher effort of imagination than the descriptive lines cited above. The poet has found means, in some way hard to analyze, to touch our soul and to put it into sympathetic accord with nature.

O Proserpina,

For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.

-"Winter's Tale," Act IV, Sc. 4, il. 116 ff.

Such idealization is far removed from the language of prose and is one of the distinctive marks of poetry. There is no fixed rule by which poets achieve this effect; often it is by the power of association in one or other form; that is, by bringing an object into touch with some elevating conception that lifts it out of the commonplace.1

Thus Homer idealizes by direct comparison in "Iliad,” Book III, where we read:

"And with her went the handmaid bearing in her bosom the tender boy, the little child, Hector's loved son, like unto a beautiful star." The comparison has nothing to do with externals, but suggests a wealth of emotional features, the radiance, softness, purity, simplicity, which the image of the star sheds on the child. In "The Solitary Reaper " Wordsworth surrounds the figure of the woman singing in the field with the light of other conceptions. 1 For a fuller discussion of the process of idealization and its relation to realism, see following chapter.

The song of the reaper is unified in the imagination with the song of nature, with distant lands, with the romantic past and all this with some quiet, simple heart-sorrow.

(c) Unifying Impression. In examining the imagery of a poem we must also consider whether the poet has succeeded in fusing the imaginative elements of his narration. or description into a homogeneous whole, which he accomplishes by the creative power of imagination described above. This appreciation cannot be made readily and offhand. By careful and sympathetic study we must determine whether he has imaged the several details under the stimulus of one dominant emotion, and whether there is produced on the reader a single impression; that is, an impression not of a series of related images, but of one large, imaginative conception richly elaborated.

Most of the shorter poems in the "Golden Treasury" illustrate this phase of the imagination, such as "The Solitary Reaper,” mentioned above. To perceive more distinctly what is expected we might contrast Keats's sonnet "On Looking Into Chapman's Homer" with the same poet's sonnet, "Bright Star." In the former the whole conception of surprise and delight grows in emphasis and power under the symbol of the traveler in mysterious wonderland, culminating in the picture of "Cortez" viewing the Pacific. In the latter the master description of the first eight lines is in a most unaccountable way repudiated in what succeeds, so that the impression is nullified. Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" is a more noteworthy instance because the vision of the poet is wider, and nature and the soul of man are brought together under one view; but this, the greatest of Wordsworth's poems, requires diligent study to realize its full value. — Milton's "Lycidas" contains at least one passage (the lines containing the words of St. Peter) in which the poet's imagination swerved into another field, and, though logically connected with his subject, it is imaginatively incoherent. The best of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, "The Prioresses Tale," "The Knightes Tale," "The Nonnes Preestes Tale,"

contain sometimes long digressions, and yet are compacted of a single imaginative view and leave one unmistakable impression on the imagination of the reader. On the other hand, Keats's "Endymion," which professes to realize the relations between the goddess Diana and her earthly lover, fails in this, and turns out to be nothing more than a series of luxurious descriptions.

2. The Imaginative Faculty in the Treatment of External Nature. We shall consider this treatment as exhibited in two different modes.

(a) Nature Colored by the Mood of the Poet. - In this case the poet approaches nature preoccupied by some personal state of soul, as sorrow, joy, bereavement, and invests the scene with the color of his emotions. He has recourse to natural imagery to body forth his subjective state. He is not concerned to interpret nature, but to interpret his own mood, as will be explained more fully below.

In the following lines the imagination of the poet goes to nature for an embodiment of the emotion of cheerlessness.

How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!

SHAKESPEARE, "Sonnet 97."

The nature poetry of Shelley is nearly always suffused with the ethereal and intense quality of his personal character to such a degree that his descriptive lines seem unreal, beautiful indeed and surrounded with a halo of light, but unconvincing as a portrait of nature. His "Skylark" is an unearthly spirit, his " West Wind” a ghostly enchanter, and we seem to be pursuing dreams, not realities, as we read.

NOTE. When the influence of the poet's feelings leads him to give a distinctly false view of nature, this misrepresentation is called the "pathetic fallacy." (See Ruskin, "Modern Painters," Vol. III, Chap. 12.) The term is not

necessarily used in a disparaging sense; such misrepresentation is legitimate, because natural to the human heart, if the emotion itself is genuine. But though true to the heart, it is still false to nature, and hence a "fallacy," and it is a "pathetic" fallacy, because occasioned by the influence of passion.

and Ruskin's observation,

KINGSLEY, "The Sands of Dee."

"the foam is not cruel, neither does

it crawl. The state of mind that attributes to it these characters is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief," or at least the observation of nature yields to the spell of emotion.

Again,

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climbest the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face.

-SIDNEY, "Sonnet."

These lines do not interpret the appeal of the moon to one thinking normally, but the disappointed lover sheds his sadness over what he sees.

(b) The Mood of Nature Interpreted by the Poet.— This act of nature interpretation is, under one aspect, the reverse of the preceding. In the former, the poet, being under the influence of some personal emotion, imbues nature with his own mood. In interpreting, the poet, contemplating a beautiful scene, is kindled into emotion or emotional thought by the influence of what he sees.

To understand this process let us conceive the following. Every aspect of nature has in itself a meaning for us, a message for our hearts, an emotional significance proper to itself, and independent of any particular mood in which we may approach it. Thus, a beetling mountain-cliff is sublime,

though I be in no sublime mood when I lift my eyes to it. The broad sunlit river is strong and peaceful, though the soul of the beholder may for other reasons be in a state of fret and agitation. The mountain, the river, are of themselves calculated to suggest the ideas of sublimity or peace.

What is true and conspicuous in the cases just mentioned is no less true of every phase of nature that comes under our view, and yet it is not given to all to see and appreciate that meaning in every case, as it is in the more palpable examples just alluded to. To create this appreciation is the office of the poet. He grasps the great idea that lies fundamentally in the scene before him; and then in his verse he pronounces this message so distinctly and truly that we, the readers, realize for ourselves, under his interpretation, the meaning of nature that before was dim and vague.

The essential act, then, of the interpretative imagination consists in apprehending and expressing the mood of nature. This may be done in various ways. First, it may be treated very simply and obviously, as when the poet merely gives expression to the beauty of the springtime or the silence of the night. Take as an example the childlike, yet genuine, ode to Spring, of Nash (Golden Treasury, No. I). The interpretation of nature is not profound, but it is nature and not the poet that is revealed to us. Many such simple interpretations of nature are to be found in Chaucer and in English Literature passim.

But secondly, Nature's meaning may be interpreted more intimately than this. The poet may bring home to us a highly complex and intricate impression made by some particular scene acting on a highly sensitive soul.

We may instance the well-known night-scene in "The Merchant of Venice,"