ow does
he paint it? What an opportunity for the display of pictorial technique
in words! But Keats is not thinking of that. One does not really
perceive a myriad little details at such a time. You never do actually
see all the things which you would describe if you sat down to think
details out one by one. If you had really fixed your eyes on the
kneeling Madeline, as Porphyro did on that eve of St. Agnes, you could
not also be taking an inventory of the particulars in the situation. The
inferior writer forgets this, because he is writing from his wits, and
not, as Keats wrote, from the spontaneous picture of imagination. What
Keats sees is this:--

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;
Rose bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross fair amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint.

That is all, and it is enough. A kneeling figure, the wintry moon, and
some few of the colours of the glass, described as they fall upon what
you would really note, the head and breast and the clasped hands. What
would not a Rossetti have done with such material!

These are descriptions. It is the same with emotions. "Pray you, undo
this button." The supreme writer does not tear passion rhetorically to
pieces. He does not elaborate it till he fritters it away. He condenses
it all into the poignant cry which goes straight from heart to heart.
What in the circumstances could Burns have said more final than--

Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met and never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

I know that there are people who cannot see that these four simple lines
are the consummate expression of a vast range of feeling. We can only
pray that Heaven will some day be merciful to them.

* * * * *

One word more seems necessary to be said. How can we tell when a writer
is succeeding in his effort to communicate, to body forth what he seeks
to body forth? Simply by our own complete apprehension, by the universal
humanity in us, by the fact that we keenly recognize that such and such
a sensation is one in which we have at least shared, but which we have
never known how to express. We realize how it has been brought over us
by loneliness, mountain solitude, a sunset, great heights, stormy seas,
music, sorrow, love, the s