speaking of Melancholy, says:

She lives with Beauty--Beauty that must die--
And Joy, whose hand is ever on his lips,
Bidding adieu,

or when Mrs. Browning writes:

... Young
As Eve with Nature's daybreak on her face,

the pleasure, both of sense and sentiment, is in each case derived alike
from the music of the language and the beauty of the ideas. But in such
lines as

Arethusa arose from her couch of snows, etc.,

or Coleridge's description of the river Alph running

Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea,

it is the language rather than the idea which fascinates. Professor
Walker, speaking of the most exquisitely harmonious lyric ever written
in English, or perhaps in any other language,[31] says with great truth:
"The reader of _Lycidas_ rises from it ready to grasp the 'two-handed
engine' and smite; though he may be doubtful what the engine is, and
what is to be smitten."

It may be observed, moreover, that one of the main difficulties to be