"In these images, the conferring, the abstracting, and the modifying
powers of the Imagination, immediately and mediately acting, are all
brought into conjunction. The stone is endowed with something of the power
of life to approximate it to the sea-beast; and the sea-beast stripped of
some of its vital qualities to assimilate it to the stone; which
intermediate image is thus treated for the purpose of bringing the
original image, that of the stone, to a nearer resemblance to the figure
and condition of the aged man; who is divested of so much of the
indications of life and motion as to bring him to the point
where the two objects unite and coalesce in just comparison."

Wordsworth's analysis of the processes of his own imagination, like Poe's
story of the composition of "The Raven," is an analysis made after the
imagination had functioned. There can be no absolute proof of its
correctness in every detail. It is evident that we have to deal with an
infinite variety of normal and abnormal minds. Some of these defy
classification; others fall into easily recognized types, such as "the
lunatic, the lover and the poet," as sketched by Theseus, Duke of Athens.
How modern, after all, is the Duke's little lecture on the psychology of
imagination!

"The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact;
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth