There dawns the entire soul in that morning; yet we may stop if we choose at the image still external, at the crimson clouds. The imagination is contemplative rather than penetrative. Last, hear Hamlet,—
"Here hung those lips that I have kissed, I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?"
There is the essence of lip, and the full power of the imagination.
Again, compare Milton's flowers in Lycidas with Perdita's. In Milton it happens, I think, generally, and in the case before us most certainly, that the imagination is mixed and broken with fancy, and so the strength of the imagery is part of iron and part of clay.
| "Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies | (Imagination) |
| The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, | (Nugatory) |
| The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,— | (Fancy) |
| The glowing violet, | (Imagination) |
| The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, | (Fancy, vulgar) |
| With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, | (Imagination) |
| And every flower that sad embroidery wears." | (Mixed) |
Then hear Perdita:—
"O, Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon. Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids."
Observe how the imagination in these last lines goes into the very inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all at first with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper-staining would have been the most precious to us of all. "There is pansies, that's for thoughts."
So I believe it will be found throughout the operation of the fancy, that it has to do with the outsides of things, and is content therewith: [§ 8. Fancy how involved with imagination.]of this there can be no doubt in such passage as that description of Mab, so often given as an illustration of it, and many other instances will be found in Leigh Hunt's work already referred to. Only some embarrassment is caused by passages in which fancy is seizing the outward signs of emotion, understanding them as such, and yet, in pursuance of her proper function, taking for her share, and for that which she chooses to dwell upon, the outside sign rather than the emotion. Note in Macbeth that brilliant instance.