Shall wholly do away, I ween
The marks of that which once hath been.” (Coleridge describes a break in friendship.)
“There was silence deep as death.” (Campbell.)
“There was silence as of death.” (Macaulay.)
“Earth turned in her sleep with pain
Sultrily suspired for proof.” (Describes a summer night’s thunder.)
“Long shall Comala look before she can behold Fingal in the midst of his host; bright as the coming forth of the morning, in the cloud of an early shower.” (Ossian.)
“In short the soul in its body sunk like a blade sent home to its scabbard.” (Browning describes suddenly suspended animation.)
I could quote thousands of similar figures. I do not, however, accept them as poetry, simply because they do not give me poetry. I dare say the Imagists would refuse to accept them as poetry, but on a different ground. No doubt they would say that many of these figures have been manufactured in the wrong place. They have been made in the cerebrum instead of in the Imagist quarter, the cerebellum. They are in fact suffering from cerebritis whereas nowadays the proper complaint is cerebralitis. So the Imagists would complain that such figures do not conform to their conception of poetry as an Art. The ideas in them are not expressed as they would express them. There is an absence of clarity, precision, novelty, freshness, originality and so on. Change the form from cerebriform to cerebraform, clip the words, remove the clichés, stop the singing, bring the image up to the quick-lunch standard and most of the figures would pass the Imagist test. All this is very pretty. But when all is said I do not see why some of the figures may not pass the test as they stand. When Mr. Hulme wants to describe a nature experience he does it in this lengthy fashion:
A touch of cold in the autumn night