Yes--as Love is truer far
Than all other things; so are
Life and Death, the World and Time
Mere false shows in some great Mime
By dreadful mystery sublime.

But at the end Tasso's faith is troubled, and he ponders,

For were life no flitting dream,
Were things truly what they seem,
Were not all this world-scene vast
But a shade in Time's stream glassed;
Were the moods we now display
Less phantasmal than the clay
In which our poor spirits clad
Act this vision, wild and sad,
I must be mad, mad,--how mad!

However, this is aside from the point. The average poet is as firmly
convinced as any philosopher that his visions are true. It is only the
manner of his inspiration that causes him to doubt his sanity. Not
merely is his mind vacant when the spirit of poetry is about to come
upon him, but he is deprived of his judgment, so that he does not
understand his own experiences during ecstasy. The idea of verbal
inspiration, which used to be so popular in Biblical criticism, has been
applied to the works of all poets. [Footnote: See _Kathrina_, by J.
G. Holland, where the heroine maintains that the inspiration of modern
poets is similar to that of the Old Testament prophets, and declares,