"[313]
And of the lulling quality of his verse take this as a sample:--
"And, more to lull him in his slumber soft,
A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down
And ever drizzling rain upon the loft,
Mixt with the murmuring wind much like the soun
Of swarming bees did cast him in a swoon.
No other noise, nor peoples' troublous cries,
As still are wont to annoy the walled town,
Might there be heard: but careless quiet lies
Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemies."[314]
In the world into which Spenser carries us there is neither time nor
space, or rather it is outside of and independent of them both, and so is
purely ideal, or, more truly, imaginary; yet it is full of form, color,
and all earthly luxury, and so far, if not real, yet apprehensible by the
senses. There are no men and women in it, yet it throngs with airy and
immortal shapes that have the likeness of men and women, and hint at some
kind of foregone reality. Now this place, somewhere between mind and
matter, between soul and sense, between the actual and the possible, is
precisely the region which Spenser assigns (if I have rightly divined
him) to the poetic susceptibility of impression,--
"To reign in the air from the earth to highest sky."
Underneath every one of the senses lies the soul and spirit of it,
dormant till they are magnetized by some powerful emotion.
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