Page:Poems, Alexander Pushkin, 1888.djvu/58

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Wordsworth also gets now a nearer view of his "Phantom of Delight;" and the sight rouses him to this pitch of enthusiastic sentiment:

In the presence of such bungling, I am almost ashamed to call attention, not to the machine that has a pulse, but to that noble woman who, purified, clarified in the imagination by the heat of a melted heart, can only become to the poet, a—machine. And this is the poet (whose very essence should be sensitiveness, delicacy, sentiment) who is ranked by Matthew Arnold as the greatest poet since Shakespeare.&hellip;

32. I have given only one example, though there is hardly a volume of English poetry, with the possible exception of those of Burns, which does not furnish dozens of examples. If I give only one, it is because I have in mind Æsop's lioness, who gave such smart reply when chided for giving birth to only one young.&hellip;