Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/276

246 also, is conveyed at times by an exquisite formlessness Imaginative formlessness. of outline. I asked the late Mr. Grant White what he thought of a certain picture by Inness, and he replied that it seemed to be "painted by a blind poet." But no Inness, Fuller, Corot, Rousseau, not even Turner, nor the broad, luminous spaces of Homer Martin, ever excelled the magic of the changeful blending conceptions of Shelley, so aptly termed the poet of Cloudland. The Cloudland; and its poet. feeling of his lyrical passages is all his own. How does it justify itself and so hold us in thrall? Yield to it, and if there is anything sensitive in your mould you are hypnotized, as if in truth gazing heavenward and fixing your eyes upon a beauteous and protean cloud; fascinated by its silvery shapelessness, its depth, its vistas, its iridescence and gloom. Listen, and the cloud is vocal with a music not to be defined. There is no appeal to the intellect; the mind seeks not for a meaning; the cloud floats ever on; the music is changeful, ceaseless, and uncloying. Their plumed invoker has become our type of the pure spirit of song, almost sexless, quite removed at times from earth and the '''Cp. "Poets of America": p. 266.''' carnal passions. Such a poet could never be a sensualist. "Brave translunary things" are to him the true realities; he is, indeed, a creature of air and light. "The Witch of Atlas," an artistic caprice, is a work of imagination, though as transparent as the moonbeams and as unconscious of warmth and cold. Mary Shelley objected to it on