Flight of poetic imagination there cannot be unless the wings have
been feathered in the heart. Loftiness or grandeur of imagination
there cannot be, except there be first innate richness and breadth of
feeling. Imagination being simply the tensest action of intellect, is
ever, like intellect in all its phases, an instrument of feeling, a
mere tool. Height implies inward depth. The gift to touch the vitals
of a subject is the test-gift of literary faculty; it is the
soul-gift, the gift of fuller, livelier sympathy. Compare Wordsworth
with Southey to learn the difference between inward and outward gifts.

Poetry being in the mind, the man who has little poetry within him
will find little in nature or in the world or in Shakespeare. The man
who has no music in his soul will hear none at the Conservatoire in
Paris. Wordsworth sees with the inward eye, Southey too exclusively
with the outward. The true poet projects visions and rhythms out from
his brain, and gazes at and hearkens to them. The degree of the
truthfulness to nature and the vividness of these projections is the
measure of his poetic genius and capacity. Only through this intense
inwardness can he attain to great visions and rhythmic raptures, and
make you see and hear them. What illimitable inward sight must Keats
have dwelt in ere, to depict the effect on him of looking into
Chapman's Homer, he could write,--

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."