[[14]]
With a scorn, like your own Essay, &c., 1850.
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA[345:1]
The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power:
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size—
In unctuous cones of kindling coal, [5]
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim hole,
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of sublimity.
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[345:1] Included in the text of The Historie and Gests of Maxilian: first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, January, 1822, vol. xi, p. 12. The lines were taken from a MS. note-book, dated August 28, 1800. First collected P. and D. W., 1877-80.