dangerous repose. But the loop-line being open, part of the current is
drafted along it, and awakens rheumatic or catarrhal reminiscences,
which prevail over the instigations of sense, and make the man arise and
pursue his way to where he may enjoy his rest more safely."

William James's entire discussion of the value of the hemisphere
"loop-line" as a reservoir of reminiscences is of peculiar suggestiveness
to the student of poetry. For it is along this loop-line of "memories and
ideas of the distant" that poetry wins its generalizing or universalizing
power. It is here that the life of reason enters into the life of mere
sensation, transforming the reports of the nerves into ideas and thoughts
that have coherence and general human significance. It is possible,
certainly, as the experiments of contemporary "imagists" prove, to write
poetry of a certain type without employing the "loop-line." But this is
pure sensorium verse, the report of retinal, auditory or tactile images,
and nothing more. "Response to impressions and representation of those
impressions in their _original isolation_ are the marks of the new poetry.
Response to impressions, _correlation of those impressions into a
connected body of phenomena_, and final interpretation of them as a whole
are, have been, and always will be the marks of the enduring in all
literature, whether poetry or prose."
[Footnote: Lewis Worthington Smith, "The New Naivete," _Atlantic_, April,
1916.]
To quote another critic: "A rock, a star, a lyre, a cataract, do not,
except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to
the bare power of evoking reactions in a series of ocular envelopes or
auditory canals. Their power lies in their freightage of association,
in their tactical position at the focus of converging experience, in
the number and vigor of the occasions in which they have crossed and
re-crossed the palpitating thoroughfares of life. ... Sense-impressions