"How _sweet_ the moonlight _sleeps_ upon this bank."

Two words, _sweet_ and _sleep_, put in the place of _calm_ and _lies_,
lift the line out of prose into poetry. A log _lies_ on a bank; so
does a dead dog, and the more dead a thing is the more it lies; but
only what is alive _sleeps_, and thus the word, besides an image of
extreme stillness, brings with it what strengthens the image, the idea
of change from liveliness to quiet; for that which was awake now
sleeps; and the more full the picture of stillness, the more awake is
the mind of the reader, awakened by the fitness and felicity of the
image. The substitution of _sweet_ for _calm_ is, in a less degree,
similarly enlivening; for, used in such conjunction, _sweet_ is more
individual and subtle, and imports more life, and thus helps the
distinctness and vividness of the picture. How does the poetic Lorenzo
word the other three lines?

"There's not the _smallest orb_ which _thou behold'st_,
But in _his motion like an angel sings_,
Still _quiring_ to the _young-eyed_ cherubins."

The words or phrases italicized carry a larger, or a deeper or a finer
meaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines. To
_behold_ is more than to _see_: it is to see contemplatively. The
figure _prosopopoeia_ is often but an impotent straining to impart
poetic life; but the personification in _in his motion_ is apt and
effective. _Quiring_ is an amplification of the immediately preceding
_sings_, and, signifying to sing in company with others, enlarges,
while making more specific, the thought. And what an image of the
freshness of heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the
epithet _young-eyed_! At every step the thought is expanded and