element of symbolism
that is in pictures and sculpture, and described a little the symbolism in
poetry, but did not describe at all the continuous indefinable symbolism
which is the substance of all style.

There are no lines with more melancholy beauty than these by Burns--

'The white moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, O!'

and these lines are perfectly symbolical. Take from them the whiteness of
the moon and of the wave, whose relation to the setting of Time is too
subtle for the intellect, and you take from them their beauty. But, when
all are together, moon and wave and whiteness and setting Time and the
melancholy cry, they evoke an emotion which cannot be evoked by any other
arrangement of colours and sounds and forms. We may call this metaphorical
writing, but it is better to call it symbolical writing, because metaphors
are not profound enough to be moving, when they are not symbols, and when
they are symbols they are the most perfect, because the most subtle,
outside of pure sound, and through them one can the best find out what
symbols are. If one begins the reverie with any beautiful lines that one
can remember, one finds they are all like those by Burns. Begin with this
line by Blake--

'The gay fishes on the wave when the moon sucks up the dew;'

or these lines by Nash--

'Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye;'

or these lines by Shakespeare--

'Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Who once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover;'

or take some line that is quite simple, that gets its beauty from its
place in a story, and see how it flickers with the light of the many
symbols that have given the story its beauty, as a sword-blade may flicker
with the light of burning towers.

All sounds, all colours, all forms, either because of their pre-ordained
energies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise
emotions, or, as I prefer to think, call down among us certain disembodied
powers, whose footsteps over our hearts we call emotions; and when sound,
and colour, and form are in a musical relation, a beautiful relation to
one another, they become as it were one sound, one colour, one form, and
evoke an emotion that is made out of their distinct evocations and yet is
one emotion. The same relation exist