e 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