en, and I will
explain exactly what he meant." Notwithstanding, we must proceed.

The device of Chaucer's _House of Fame_, wherein the poet is carried to
celestial realms by an eagle, occasionally occurs to the modern poet as
an account of his _Aufschwung_. Thus Keats, in _Lines to Apollo_, avers,

Aye, when the soul is fled
Too high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze
As doth a mother wild
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws.

"Poetry, my life, my eagle!" [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] cries Mrs.
Browning, likening herself to Ganymede, ravished from his sheep to the
summit of Olympus. The same attitude is apparent in most of her poems,
for Mrs. Browning, in singing mood, is precisely like a child in a
swing, shouting with delight at every fresh sensation of soaring.
[Footnote: See J. G. Percival, _Genius Awaking_, for the same
figure.]

Again, the crash of the poet's inspiration upon his ordinary modes of
thought is compared to "fearful claps of thunder," by Keats [Footnote:
See _Sleep and Poetry_.] and others. [Footnote: See _The Master_, A. E.
Cheney.] Or, more often, his moment of sudden insight seems a lightning
flash upon the dark ways in which he is ordinarily groping. Keats says
that his early visions were seen as through a rift of sheet lightning.
[Footnote: See _The Epistle to George Keats_.] Emerson's impression is
the same; visions come "as if life were a thunderstorm wherein you can
see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand." [Footnote:
_Essay on Inspiration_.] Likewise Alexander Smith declares,

Across the midnight sea of mind
A thought comes streaming like a blazing ship
Upon a mighty wind,
A terror and a glory! Shocked with light,
His boundless being glares aghast.
[Footnote: _A Life Drama_.]

Perhaps this is a true expression of the poet's feelings during the
deepest inspiration, yet we are minded of Elijah's experience with the
wind and the fire and the still small voice. So we cannot help
sympathizing with Browning's protest against "friend Naddo's" view that
genius is a matter of bizarre and grandiose sensations. [Footnote:
_Sordello_.] At least it is pleasant to find verse, by minor
writers though it be, describing the quietude and naturalness of the
poet's best moments. Thus Holmes tells us of his inspiration:

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought
Endymion's fragrant bower,
She parts the whispering leav