And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the Daffodils.”
Wordsworth, notably among poets, has the gift of expressing the inexpressible, of clothing in language some fleeting sensation which seems, of its exquisiteness and illusiveness, undefinable. There are lines of his that follow one like a phrase of music.
“The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion.”
“The light that never was on sea or land.”
“... Old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.”
The first effect of any sight of surpassing beauty, indeed of any strong emotion of admiration, is an instant desire of expression; then comes the pain of inarticulateness to most of us—there is a swelling of the soul and no outlet! That is why, when someone else may have perfectly said what for us is inexpressible, there is a double joy in discoveries.
To wander from our lilies to flowers of speech and description: the perfect phrase has in itself a delight that almost equals that of the perfect thought.
For those who, like ourselves, work in words, however humbly—poor stone-breakers compared to such as make the marble live—the mere art in the setting of the words themselves has a fascination of its own. It is not only the idea—it is sometimes not even the idea that enchants. There is a magic of cadence alone. Sometimes, indeed, just a conjunction of two words seems to make a chord.