th his own spirit.

Shelley's Ode to the West Wind is the eminent example of such magical
power. The three vast elements, earth, air, and water, are first brought
into a union through their connection with the west wind; and, the wind
still being the controlling centre of imagination, the poet, drawing all
this limitless and majestic imagery with him, by gradual and spontaneous
approaches identifies himself at the climax of feeling with the object
of his invocation,--

"Be thou me, impetuous one!"

and thence the poem swiftly falls to its end in a lyric burst of
personality, in which, while the body of nature is retained, there is
only a spiritual meaning. So Burns in some songs, and Keats in some
odes, following the same method, make nature their own syllables, as of
some cosmic language. This is the highest reach of the artist's power
of conveying through the concrete image the soul in its pure emotional
life; and in such poetry one feels that the whole material world seems
lent to man to expand his nature and escape from the solitude in which
he is born to that divine union to which he is destined. The evolution
of this one moment of passion is lyric form, whose unity lies in
personality exclusively, however it may seem to involve the external
world which is its imagery,--its body lifted from the dust, woven of
light and air, but alive only while the spirit abides there. And here,
too, as elsewhere, to whatever height the poet may rise, it must be one
to which man can follow, to which, indeed, the poet lifts men. Nor is it
only nature which thus suffers spiritualization through the stress of
imagination interpreting life in definite and sensible forms of beauty,
but the imagery of action also may be similarly taken possession of,
though this is rare in merely lyrical expression.

The ideal world, then, to present in full summary these views, is thus
built up, through personality in all its richness, by a perfected
imitation of life itself, and is set forth in universal unities of
relation, causal or formal, to the intellect in its inward, to the sense
of beauty in its outward, aspects; and thereby delighting the desire of
the mind for lucid and lovely order, it generates joy, and thence is
born the will to conform one's self to this order. If, then, this order
be conceived as known in its principles and in operation in living
souls, as existing in its completeness on the simplest scale in an
entire series of