poetry.'. . . It is not subject to the control of the active powers of the
mind. ... Its birth and recurrence have no necessary connection with the
consciousness or will." Shelley, _A Defense of Poetry_.]

For sometimes, assuredly, the synthesis of images seems to take place
without the volition of the poet. The hypnotic trance, the narcotic dream
or revery, and even our experience of ordinary dreams, provide abundant
examples. One dreams, for instance, of a tidal river, flowing in with a
gentle full current which bends in one direction all the water-weeds and
the long grasses trailing from the banks; then somehow the tide seems to
change, and all the water and the weeds and grasses, even the fishes in
the stream, turn slowly and flow out to sea. The current synthesizes,
harmonizes, moves onward like music,--and we are aware that it is all a
dream. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," composed in a deep opium slumber, moves
like that, one train of images melting into another like the interwoven
figures of a dance led by the "damsel with a dulcimer." There is no
"conscious purpose" whatever, and no "meaning" in the ordinary
interpretation of that word. Nevertheless it is perfect integration of
imagery, pure beauty to the senses. Something of this rapture in the sheer
release of control must have been in Charles Lamb's mind when he wrote to
Coleridge about the "pure happiness" of being insane. "Dream not,
Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till
you have gone mad! All now seems to me vapid, comparatively so." (June 10,
1796.)

If "Kubla Khan" represents one extreme, Poe's account of how he wrote "The
Raven"
[Footnote: _The Philosophy of Composition_.]
--incredible as the story appears to most of us--may serve to illustrate
the other, namely, a cool, conscious, workmanlike control of every element