Like other purest essences, exhale
And penetrate the mould, your flowers shall be
Of rarest hue and perfume.”
From “The Realm of Dreams,” we extract this exquisite couplet:
“And where the spring-time sun had longest shone
And violet looked up, and found itself alone.”
The above has a positive fragrance, that unexplainable odor which at once distinguishes genuine poetry, however disguised, from all imitations, however ingenious. No one but a true poet could have written this passage, which, for its suggestive delicacy, is scarcely rivaled in our language. From the same poem we extract this simile, describing the unruffled quiet of a small mountain lake:—
“Through underwood of laurel, and across
A little lawn, shoe-deep with sweetest moss,
I passed, and found the lake, which, like a shield