but for this spiritual efficacy, could not be stirred, just as heavy
stones are raised by delicate growing plants. To exert this power the
poet is always moved at the instance of feeling. Poetry having its
birth in feeling, no man can enjoy or value it but through feeling.
But what moves him to embody and shape his feeling is that ravishing
sentiment which will have the best there is in the feeling, the
sentiment which seeks satisfaction through contemplation or
entertainment of the most divine and most perfect, and ever rises to
the top of the refined joy which such contemplation educes.

The poetic imagination is the Ariel of the poet,--his spiritual
messenger and Mercury. A clear look into the above passages would show
that the source of their power is in the farther scope or exquisite
range the imagination opens to us, often by a word. For further
illustration I will take a few other examples, scrutinizing them more
minutely. Had Lorenzo opened the famous passage in "The
Merchant of Venice" thus,--

"How _calm_ the moonlight _lies_ upon this bank,"

and continued to the end of the dozen lines in the same key, saying,--

"There's not the _tiniest star_ that _can be seen_
But in its _revolution_ it doth _hum_,
Aye _chanting_ to the _heavenly_ cherubins,"

his words would not have become celebrated and quotable. But Lorenzo
has the privilege of being one of the mouth-pieces of Shakespeare, and
so he begins,--