he words or phrases italicized carry a larger, or a deeper or a finer
meaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines. To
_behold_ is more than to _see_: it is to see contemplatively. The
figure _prosopopoeia_ is often but an impotent straining to impart
poetic life; but the personification in _in his motion_ is apt and
effective. _Quiring_ is an amplification of the immediately preceding
_sings_, and, signifying to sing in company with others, enlarges,
while making more specific, the thought. And what an image of the
freshness of heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the
epithet _young-eyed_! At every step the thought is expanded and
beautiful, reaching at the end of the third line a climax on which the
poetically excited mind is left poised in delight.

But the passage transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is still
poetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening
of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining
poetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less
figurative words. And the thought is poetical because it is the result
of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these
being moved by the soaring demands of the beautiful, and beating an
atmosphere exhaled from sensibility. As Joubert says,--herein uttering
a cardinal aesthetic principle,--"It is, above all, in the spirituality
of ideas that poetry consists." Thought that is poetic will glisten
through the plainest words; whereas, if the thought be prosaic or
trite, all the gilded epithets in the dictionary will not give it the
poetic sheen. Perdita wishes for

"Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."

Note the poetic potency in the simple word _dares_; how much it
carries: the cold which the swallow has not the courage to confront; a
mental action, I might almost call it, in the swallow, who, after
making a recognizance of the season, determines that it would be rash
to venture so far north: all this is in the single word. For _dares_
write _does_, and the effect would be like that of cutting a
gash in a rising balloon: you would let the line suddenly down,
because you take the life out of the thought.

"And take
The winds of March with beauty."

Every one is taken at some time or other with the beauty of person or
thing, and the thought is common; bu