It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within
the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an
incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns
to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through
life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare
the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.
All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the
percipient. "The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven
of hell, a hell of heaven." But poetry defeats the curse which binds
us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And
whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark
veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being
within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the
familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which
we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight
the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being.
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