It comes to him a thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words,--words that have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have never been wedded until now.

Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain; but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale with it.

It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences of association.

No wonder the ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external.

[Greek text which cannot be reproduced].