Poetry puts a spirit
of life and motion into the universe. It describes the flowing, not
the fixed. It does not define the limits of sense, or analyse the
distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the
imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or
feeling. The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite
sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself, that
is impatient of all limit, that (as flame bends to flame) strives to
link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur, to
enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to
relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest
manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality in other
instances. Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this reason "has
something divine in it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into
sublimity, by conforming the shows of things to the desires of the
soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, as reason and
history do".
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