at last apprehended, a better
daylight, but earthly, open only to the senses. Complex and subtle
interests, which the mind spins for itself may occupy art and poetry
or our own spirits for a time; but sooner or later they come back
with a sharp rebound to the simple elementary passions--anger,
desire, regret, [222] pity, and fear: and what corresponds to them in
the sensuous world--bare, abstract fire, water, air, tears, sleep,
silence, and what De Quincey has called the "glory of motion."

This reaction from dreamlight to daylight gives, as always happens, a
strange power in dealing with morning and the things of the morning.
Not less is this Hellenist of the Middle Age master of dreams, of
sleep and the desire of sleep--sleep in which no one walks, restorer
of childhood to men--dreams, not like Galahad's or Guenevere's, but
full of happy, childish wonder as in the earlier world. It is a
world in which the centaur and the ram with the fleece of gold are
conceivable. The song sung always claims to be sung for the first
time. There are hints at a language common to birds and beasts and
men. Everywhere there is an impression of surprise, as of people
first waking from the golden age, at fire, snow, wine, the touch of
water as one swims, the salt taste of the sea. And this simplicity
at first hand is a strange contrast to the sought-out simplicity of
Wordsworth. Desire here is towards the body of nature for its own
sake, not because a soul is divined through it.

And yet it is one of the charming anachronisms of a poet, who, while
he handles an ancient subject, never becomes an antiquarian, but
animates his [223] subject by keeping it always close to himself,
that betweenwhiles we have a sense of English scenery as from an eye
well practised under Wordsworth's influence, as from "the casement
half opened on summer-nights," with the song of the brown bird among
the willows, the

"Noise of bells, such as in moonlit lanes
Rings from the grey team on the market night."

Nowhere but in England is there such a "paradise of birds," the
fern-owl, the water-hen, the thrush in a hundred sweet variations, the
ger-falcon, the kestrel, the starling, the pea-fowl; birds heard from
the field by the townsman down in the streets at dawn; doves
everywhere, pink-footed, grey-winged, flitting about the temple,
troubled by the temple incense, trapped in the snow. The sea-touches
are not less sharp and firm, surest of