sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature."

Sec. 6. Various instances.

Observe how spiritual, yet how wandering and playful the fancy is in the
first two stanzas, and how far she flies from the matter in hand, never
stopping to brood on the character of any one of the images she summons,
and yet for a moment truly seeing and believing in them all; while in
the last stanza the imagination returns with its deep feeling to the
heart of the flower, and "_cleaves fast_" to that. Compare the operation
of the imagination in Coleridge, on one of the most trifling objects
that could possibly have been submitted to its action.

"The thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not:
Only that film which fluttered on the grate
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me, who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit
By its own moods interprets; everywhere,
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of thought."

Lastly, observe the sweet operation of fancy regardant, in the following
well-known passage from Scott, where both her beholding and transforming
powers are seen in their simplicity.

"The rocky summits--split and rent,
Formed turret, dome, or battlement.--
Or seemed fantastically set
With cupola or minaret.
Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
Nor lacked they many a banner fair,
For from their shivered brows displayed,
Far o'er th' unfathomable glade,
All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen,
The brier-rose fell, in streamers green,--
And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes
Waved in the west wind's summer sighs."

Let the reader refer to this passage, with its pretty tremulous
conclusion above the pine tree, "where glistening streamers waved and
danced," and then compare with it the following, where the imagination
operates on a scene nearly similar.

"Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemm'