loves, are in themselves bounded in their action near and direct; but
growing round the very fountain of life, having their roots
in the core of being, they are liable to strike beyond their
individual limits, and this they do with power when under their sway
the whole being is roused and expanded. When by their movement the
better nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice, as in the story
of Damon and Pythias, the reader or beholder is lifted into the
atmosphere of finest emotion; for then the impulse has reached its
acme of function, and playing in the noonday of the beautiful, the
contemplation of it purges and dilates us. We are upraised to the
disinterested mood, the poetical, in which mood there is ever
imaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities. It is not
extravagant to affirm that when act or thought reaches the beautiful,
it resounds through the whole being, tuning it like a high strain of
sweetest music. Thus in the poetical (and there is no poetry until the
sphere of the beautiful is entered) there is always a reverberation
from the emotional nature. Reverberation implies space, an ample vault
of roof or of heaven. In a tight, small chamber there can be none. If
feeling is shut within itself, there is no reëcho. Its explosion must
rebound from the roomy dome of sentiment, in order that it become
musical.

The moment you enter the circle of the beautiful, into which
you can only be ushered by a light within yourself, a light kindled
through livelier recognition of the divine spirit,--the moment you
draw breath in this circle you find yourself enlarged, spiritualized,
buoyed above the self. No matter how surrounded, or implicated, or
enthralled, while you are there, be it but for a few moments, you are
liberated.