“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
The Swan of silvery whiteness may have been the heraldic badge of the Poets, but that “bird of wonder,” the Phœnix, which,—
“Left sweete Arabie:
And on a Cædar in this coast
Built vp her tombe of spicerie,”[[163]]—