Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/319

THE FIRST MORRIS 293 we treasure and ponder poetry as we do ; and when we chip off, to use as amulets, such crystals as Brightness falls from the air : or or Life like a dome of many -coloured glass Stains the white radiance of eternity : Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn : choosing always a token for the eye, never a mere tune for the ear or an abstract text for the mind, we are making admission of our dim belief in their special virtue, our recognition that they are a kind of quint- essence. Sunbright epitomes at their lowest, at their best they are crystallizations, formed in some intenser fire of energy, of perceptions too pure and fine for the standard statements of reasoned thought : and to handle them, even apart from their setting, is to receive and be adjusted to the power that flowed up to this supreme point in the poem. They are the bright precipitates of the poet's mood, coins that concentrate the wealth of a landscape, bearing much the same relation to the rest of the poem that the poem itself does towards the spreading spacos of the poet's life. Condensations of condensations — is it too much to imagine that poetry compact of them, built solely of images, may be, if not actually a superior summary, a final and yet finer concentration, then at least quite delectably free from alloy, a strangely precious new manner of writing? Admit even that and you grant Guenevere legitimacy : it falls purely into place — clear descendant of Christabel — immensely, unexpectedly, de race ! To talk of this schoolboy creating a superb ultimate symbol — taking from