A parrot _hangs_ from the wires of his cage by his beak or by his claws; or a monkey from the bough of a tree by his paws or his tail.

Each creature does so literally and actually.

In the first Eclogue of Virgil, the shepherd, thinking of the time when he is to take leave of his farm, thus addresses his goats:-- Non ego vos posthac viridi projectus in antro Dumosa _pendere_ procul de rupe videbo.
-- --half way down _Hangs_ one who gathers samphire, is the well-known expression of Shakespeare, delineating an ordinary image upon the cliffs of Dover.

In these two instances is a slight exertion of the faculty which I denominate imagination, in the use of one word: neither the goats nor the samphire-gatherer do literally hang, as does the parrot or the monkey; but, presenting to the senses something of such an appearance, the mind in its activity, for its own gratification, contemplates them as hanging.
As when far off at sea a fleet descried _Hangs_ in the clouds, by equinoctial winds Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles Of Ternate or Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape Ply, stemming nightly toward the Pole; so seemed Far off the flying Fiend.
Here is the full strength of the imagination involved in the word _hangs_, and exerted upon the whole image: First, the fleet, an aggregate of many ships, is represented as one mighty person, whose track, we know and feel, is upon the waters; but, taking advantage of its appearance to the senses, the Poet dares to represent it as _hanging in the clouds_, both for the gratification of the mind in contemplating the image itself, and in reference to the motion and appearance of the sublime objects to which it is compared.
From impressions of sight we will pass to those of sound; which, as they must necessarily be of a less definite character, shall be selected from these volumes: Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove _broods_; of the same bird, His voice was _buried_ among trees, Yet to be come at by the breeze; O, Cuckoo I shall I call thee _Bird_, Or but a wandering _Voice_?
The stock-dove is said to _coo_, a sound well imitating the note of the bird; but, by the intervention of the metaphor _broods_, the affections are called in by the imagination to assist in marking the manner in which the bird reiterates and prolongs her soft note, as if herself delighting to listen to it, and participating of a still and quiet satisfaction, like that which may be supposed inseparable from the continuous process of incubation.

'His voice was buried among trees,' a metaphor expressing the love of _seclusion_ by which this Bird is marked; and characterizing its note as not partaking of the shrill and the piercing, and therefore more easily deadened by the intervening shade; yet a note so peculiar and withal so pleasing, that the breeze, gifted with that love of the sound which the Poet feels, penetrates the shades in which it is entombed, and conveys it to the ear of the listener.
Shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering _Voice_?
This concise interrogation characterizes the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal existence; the Imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight.
Thus far of images independent of each other, and immediately endowed by the mind with properties that do not inhere in them, upon an incitement from properties and qualities the existence of which is inherent and obvious.