Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/285

Rh and see what pathetic truth and beauty dwell within the humble rooms of Millet's cottage; go to Ayr, and find the muse's darling beneath a straw-thatched roof; think what feudal glories came to Chatterton in his garret, what thoughts of fair marble shapes, of casements "innumerable of stains and splendid dyes," lighted up for Keats his borough lodgings. Doré was asked, at the flood-tide of his good fortune, why he did not buy or build a château. "Let my patrons do that," he said. "Why should I, who have no need of it? My château is here, behind my forehead." He who owns the wings of imagination shudders on no height; he is above fate and chance. Its power of vision makes him greater Creation. still, for he sees and illuminates every-day life and common things. Its creative gift is divine; and I can well believe the story told of the greatest and still living Victorian poet, that once, in his college days, he looked deep and earnestly into the subaqueous life of a stream near Cambridge, and was heard to say, "What an imagination God has!" Certainly without it was not anything made that was made, either by the Creator, or by those created in his likeness. I say "created," but there are times when we think upon the amazing "Ye shall be as Gods." beauty, the complexity, the power and endurance, of the works of human hands—such as, for example, some of the latest architectural decorations illuminated by the electric light with splendor never conceived of even by an ancestral