smoldering fire on the hearth, through whose sleepy
smoke there comes a partial heat; the poetic is the flame in
full fervor, springing upward, illuminating, warming the heart,
delighting the intellect. The imagination of the reader, quickened by
illustrations so apt and original, is by their beauty tuned to its
most melodious key, while by the rare play of intellectual vitality
his mind is dilated. He has become mentally a richer man, enriched
through the refining and enlarging of his higher sensibilities, and
the activity imparted to his intellect.

To say of a man that he is without imagination were to say he is an
idiot; that is, one lacking the inward force and the inward
instruments to grasp and handle the materials collected from without
by perception and memory, and from within by consciousness. To say of
a poet that he is without poetic imagination were to say he is no
poet. What is poetic imagination? This, for our theme, is a vital
question. Can there be given to it an approximate answer?

Figure to yourself a company of men and women in presence of a
September sunset near the sea, the eye taking in at once ocean and a
variegated landscape. The company must not be a score of tawny
American aborigines, nor of European peasants, nor of individuals
whose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or
luxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture;
but, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist of persons
whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the
wonders and beauties of nature, and whose intellect has been tilled
sufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh seed of thought that may
be thrown upon it; in short, a score of cultivated adults. The
impression made by such a scene on such a company is heightened by a
rare atmospheric calm. The heart of each gazer fills with emotion, at
first unutterable except by indefinite exclamation; when one of the
company says,--

"A fairer face of evening cannot be."

These words, making a smooth iambic line, give some utterance, and
therefore some relief, to the feeling of all. Then another adds,--

"The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration."

Instantly the whole scene, steeped in the beams of the sinking sun, is
flooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight, a spiritual light.
The scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is as if the heavens
had opened, and inundated all it