Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/266

236 that its expression must be novel and difficult. Commonplace thought and verse, however clear, certainly are not greater than Browning's, but as a rule the better the poet the more intelligible. There are no stronger conceptions than those of the Book of Job, of Isaiah, Homer, Shakespeare, nor are there any more patent in their simplicity to the common understanding.

The imagination in literature is not confined to Quality, not theme. that which deals with the weird or super-human. It is true that, for convenience' sake, the selections classed in the best of our anthologies as "Poems of the Imagination" consist wholly of verse relative to nymphs, fairies, sprites, apparitions, and the like. Although this justly includes "Comus" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," there is more fantasy than imagination in other pieces,—in such a piece, for instance, as "The Culprit Fay." No one knows better than the critical editor of "The Household Book of Poetry" that there is more of the high imaginative element in brief touches, such as Wordsworth's

or Shakespeare's

or Bryant's path of the waterfowl, through