Coleridge, "is a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of
creation in the infinite _I am_."
[Footnote: _Biographia Literaria_, chap. 13.]
Here, evidently, unless the "God-intoxicated" Coleridge is talking
nonsense, we are in the presence of powers that do not need as yet any use
of verbal symbols.


_4. Verbal Images_

The plasticity of the world as it appears to the mind of the poet is
clearly evidenced by the swarm of images which present themselves to the
poet's consciousness. In the re-presentation of these pictures to us the
poet is forced, of course, to use verbal images. The precise point at
which he becomes conscious of employing words no doubt varies with the
individual, and depends upon the relative balance of auditory, visual or
tactile images in his mind. Swinburne often impresses us as working
primarily with the "stuff" of word-sounds, as Browning with the stuff of
sharp-cut tactile or motor images, and Victor Hugo with the stuff of
visual impressions. But in each case the poet's sole medium of _expression
to us_ is through verbal symbols, and it is hard to get behind these into
the real workshop of the brain where each poet is busily minting his own
peculiar raw material into the current coin of human speech.

Nevertheless, many poets have been sufficiently conscious of what is going
on within their workshop to tell us something about it. Professor
Fairchild has made an interesting collection
[Footnote: _The Making of Poetry_, pp. 78, 79.]
of testimony relating to the tumultuous crowding of images, each
clamoring, as it were, for recognition and crying "take me!" He instances,