The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires the echoes with unvaried cries;
Sunk are thy bowers, in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o’ertops the mouldering wall.’
It is by the selection of such objects as have in themselves no common bond of union, but which combine to raise a certain emotion, that the essential distinction is to be found between the descriptions of the poet and the prose-writer. The latter joins objects together as they are joined in nature, following a principle of association which is simple and obvious. His resemblances are usually such as are cognizable by the senses; a likeness in the sensible qualities of things. The poet’s principle of association is in the effect produced on his imagination. Things which have not in themselves a single point of similarity, are connected together, because they produce the same emotions of pleasure, or pain, or hope, or melancholy. A beautiful illustration of this is found in the opening stanzas of Gray’s Elegy:
‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.