‘Scenes that soothed
Or charmed me young, no longer young I find
Still soothing and of power to charm me still.’[203]
And it is in this matter of association that the poets most of all help us. It is they who can disentangle the subtle threads of emotion and thought that have twined themselves about the simple impressions of the natural world, and who in turn can interweave a tissue of still more splendid imaginative glory with all our sight and all our hearing. It is Shakespeare with his
‘Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.’
it is Keats, with his
‘Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,’
or his,