new that simple goal, but she loved her imagery.
In the passage of _Jane Eyre_ that tells of the return to Thornfield
Hall, in ruins by fire, she bespeaks her reader's romantic attention to
an image which in truth is not all golden. She has moments, on the other
hand, of pure narrative, whereof each word is such a key as I spoke of
but now, and unlocks an inner and an inner plain door of spiritual
realities. There is, perhaps, no author who, simply telling what
happened, tells it with so great a significance: "Jane, did you hear that
nightingale singing in the wood?" and "She made haste to leave us." But
her characteristic calling is to images, those avenues and temples
oracular, and to the vision of symbols.

You may hear the poet of great imagery praised as a great mystic.
Nevertheless, although a great mystical poet makes images, he does not do
so in his greatest moments. He is a great mystic, because he has a full
vision of the mystery of realities, not because he has a clear invention
of similitudes.

Of many thousand kisses the poor last,

and

Now with his love, now in the colde grave

are lines on the yonder side of imagery. So is this line also:

Sad with the promise of a different sun,

and

Piteous passion keen at having found,
After exceeding ill, a little good.

Shakespeare, Chaucer and Patmore yield us these great examples. Imagery
is for the time when, as in these lines, the shock of feeling (which must
needs pass, as the heart beats and pauses) is gone by:

Thy heart with dead winged innocence filled,
Even as a nest with birds,
After the old ones by the hawk are killed.

I cite these lines of Patmore's because of their imagery in a poem that
without them would be insupportably close to spiritual facts; and because
it seems to prove with what a yielding hand at play the poet of realities
holds his symbols for a while. A great writer is both a major and a
minor mystic, in the self-same poem; now suddenly close to his mystery
(which is his greater moment) and anon making it mysterious with imagery
(which is the moment of his most beautiful lines).

The student passes delighted through the several courts of poetry, from
the outer to the inner, from riches to more imaginative riches, and from
decoration to more complex decoration; and prepares himself for the
greater opulence of the innermost chamber. But when he crosses the last
threshold he finds this mid-most