In Donne's "Relic" there is an
example of what I mean. He fancies some one breaking up his grave and
spying
"A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,"--
a verse that still shines there in the darkness of the tomb, after two
centuries, like one of those inextinguishable lamps whose secret is
lost.[72] Yet Dryden sometimes showed a sense of this magic of a
mysterious hint, as in the "Spanish Friar":--
"No, I confess, you bade me not in words;
The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs,
And pointed full upon the stroke of murder."
This is perhaps a solitary example. Nor is he always so possessed by the
image in his mind as unconsciously to choose even the picturesquely
imaginative word. He has done so, however, in this passage from "Marriage
a la Mode":--
"You ne'er mast hope again to see your princess,
Except as prisoners view fair walks and streets,
And careless passengers going by their grates."
But after all, he is best upon a level, table-land, it is true, and a
very high level, but still somewhere between the loftier peaks of
inspiration and the plain of every-day life. In those passages where he
moralizes he is always good, setting some obvious truth in a new light by
vigorous phrase and happy illustration.
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