I answer’d.
“When emotion swells and shrinks,
The spirit’s wings are moving,” she replied.
“And that art moves them most, which mirrors most
The life that is, and therefore is the truth.
So often have I heard my father say:
‘We read of truth who spell from nature’s page;
And art can best make out the meanings there;
For ’tis the artist’s thought that finds each form
A form of thought,—imagination’s glass