"Heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind."
With these I suspect may be fitly classed, notwithstanding its delicacy, the following from Iachimo's description of Imogen, when he comes out of the trunk in her chamber:
"The flame o' the taper
Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids,
To see th' enclosèd lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd
With blue of heaven's own tinct."
Also this, from the soliloquy of Posthumus in repentance for the supposed death of Imogen by his order:
"My conscience, thou art fetter'd
More than my shanks and wrists: you good gods give me
The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,
Then free for ever!"
I add still another example; from one of old Nestor's speeches on the selection of a champion to fight with the Trojan hero:
"It is suppos'd,
He that meets Hector issues from our choice:
And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,
Makes merit her election; and doth boil,
As 'twere from forth us all, a man distill'd
Out of our virtues."
All these—and I could quote a hundred such—are, to my thinking, instances of happy and, I will add, even wise audacity: at least, if there be any overstraining of imagery, I can easily shrive the fault, for the subtile felicity involved in them. They are certainly quite at home in the millennium of poetry which Shakespeare created for us; albeit I can well remember the time when such transcendent raptures were to me as
"Some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers."
It would be strange indeed if a man so exceedingly daring did not now and then overdare. And so I think the Poet's boldness in metaphor sometimes makes him overbold, or at least betrays him into infelicities of boldness. Here are two instances, from The Tempest, v. 1: