Remark the humanizing imagery and circumstances of the first two lines,
and the activity of thought in the play of words in the fourth line. The
whole stanza presents at once the time, the appearance of the morning,
and the two persons distinctly characterized, and in six simple verses
puts the reader in possession of the whole argument of the poem.


Over one arm the lusty courser's rein,
Under the other was the tender boy,
Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy,
She red and hot, as coals of glowing fire,
He red for shame, but frosty to desire:-


This stanza and the two following afford good instances of that poetic
power, which I mentioned above, of making every thing present to the
imagination--both the forms, and the passions which modify those forms,
either actually, as in the representations of love, or anger, or other
human affections; or imaginatively, by the different manner in which
inanimate objects, or objects unimpassioned themselves, are caused to be
seen by the mind in moments of strong excitement, and according to the
kind of the excitement,--whether of jealousy, or rage, or love, in the
only appropriate sense of the word, or of the lower impulses of our
nature, or finally of the poetic feeling itself. It is, perhaps, chiefly
in the power of producing and reproducing the latter that the poet
stands distinct.

The subject of the Venus and Adonis is unpleasing; but the poem itself
is for that very reason the more illustrative of Shakspeare. There are