The first stanza of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind calls up in succession all that we have read or known of the mysteries of witchcraft, of the horrors of plague, of funeral trains, mustering armies, and shepherded flocks.

"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; Hear, oh hear!"

Imagination and Fancy. We have already used the word imagination in a broad sense as virtually synonymous with all poetic or creative activity. In a somewhat narrower sense, however, it is applied only to the higher and nobler phases of this activity, while the word fancy is employed to distinguish the lower phases. The marks of fancy are to be found in such poetry as deals with the merely pretty or amusing, the diminutive, the superficial, the ephemeral, the sentimental, and the like. At the lowest it may descend to the palpably false. When Pope,

for instance, in one of his early pastorals, declares that at the nightingale's song "all the aerial audience clapped their wings," he strains his fancy quite to the verge of the ridiculous. Most of the stock images of poetry, like "rosy cheeks" and "ivory brow," and especially those which attempt to adorn nature with the attributes of art, such as "silken wings" and "jewelled skies," must be regarded as creations of a not very worthy fancy. From its worthier exercise, however, may spring such an admirable poem as, for instance, Gray's playful Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, or the numerous graceful trifles of Herrick, or the best of the sentimental effusions of Moore. A good example of fancy passing into imagination may be seen in Gray's Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude.

On the other hand, the heat and glow of the pure imagination are at once stronger and steadier than the passing gleams of fancy. Imagination ranges beyond the immediate, deals freely with the vast in space or power, penetrates appearances and seizes and reveals whatever is fundamentally true, beautiful, and good. It is the native gift of the supreme poets. We may trace its workings upon every page of Shakspere, the greatest master of both the secrets of nature and the passions of men. It illuminates

as with a kind of celestial radiance the lines of Wordsworth's inspired odes. Unconditioned by time or space, it freely transcends fact, but never truth. Ideal truth is indeed one of its essential characteristics. When Wordsworth makes Nature say of Lucy that

"Beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face,"

we are at first startled as by something merely fanciful and untrue. But a second thought makes us see that this is no idle fancy, but the profoundest of imaginative truth. Indeed, we may conceive it to be the literal fact that harmonies which pass through the senses to the mind may be reproduced in the organs of the body. Literalness, however, is no necessary quality. When Milton ventures upon the high imaginings of a Paradise Lost, he does not bind himself to fact, that is, to actual human experience. Much of the machinery of that great poem is a palpable fiction. Through its daring symbolism, however, it sets forth what Milton conceived to be the deepest truths of the moral and spiritual universe.

Select Diction. - Coleridge said that whereas prose is simply "words in their best order," poetry, in his definition, is "the best words in the best order." Naturally poetry, being con

secrated to the highest spiritual purposes, seeks a consecrated language. It avoids all words that might shock or offend. It clings instinctively to what is old and well-tried. Thus a greater archaism is not only permitted to poetry than to prose-it is almost forced upon it; and so we find in it certain forms, like "wast," "yon," "trod," "burthen," which prose no longer uses. Now and then a poet will strike out boldly into new fields, forcing to his purposes a very modern or even local and technical diction. But the difficulty is great and the attempt dangerous, requiring for success a high order of imagination and taste.* On the other hand, verse-writers sometimes betray an excessive tendency to keep to a special "poetic" vocabulary. They think, for instance, that they must write of "crystal" instead of "glass," of "steed" or "courser" instead of "horse," of "youths and maidens" instead of "boys and girls." Poetry has doubtless shown a general preference for the former of these terms, a preference stronger at certain periods in the history of our literature than at others. But the preference is not always justifiable, since it

*Perhaps as good an example of this as could be found (for by the nature of the case one is practically compelled to select from contemporary verse) is Mr. Kipling's McAndrew's Hymn.

does not follow that what is common is commonplace or that what is homely is unpoetical. Sometimes the deepest feelings and the most sacred associations go with the familiar, homely word.

Indeed, poetry usually prefers the simple word. This springs logically from the simplicity which we have seen to be characteristic of poetry in general. Long, hard words are learned comparatively late in life; they have not gathered about them so many associations, nor do they call them up so readily; in fact, they do not usually stand for the simpler human feelings and relations, but rather for the refinements of mature life and experience, when love passes into regard, and ardent will into preference, and joy into a measured gratification. Or they stand for the subtle distinctions of philosophic and scientific analysis, with which poetry has little or no concern. But we may not be dogmatic on this point, nor attempt to fix arbitrary limits. Milton employs a highly Latinized diction to suit the dignified character of his epic, and he has clearly felt the poetic beauty of certain long and resonant proper names. the sonnets of Rossetti, too, may be found many such words as "desultory," "regenerate," "primordial," "irretrievably," "inexorable supremacy,"

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