I look at
the mountains (that visible God Almighty that looks in at all my
windows)--I look at the mountains only for the curves of their outlines;
the stars, as I behold them, form themselves into triangles; and my
hands are scarred with scratches from a cat, whose back I was rubbing in
the dark in order to see whether the sparks from it were refrangible by
a prism. The Poet is dead in me; my imagination (or rather the Somewhat
that had been imaginative) lies like a cold snuff on the circular rim of
a brass candlestick, without even a stink of tallow to remind you that
it was once clothed and mitred with flame. That is past by. I was once a
volume of gold leaf, rising and riding on every breath of Fancy, but I
have beaten myself back into weight and density, and now I sink in
quicksilver and remain squat and square on the earth amid the hurricane
that makes oaks and straws join in one dance, fifty yards high in the
element.
However I will do what I can. Taste and feeling have I none, but what I
have, give I unto thee. But I repeat that I am unfit to decide on any
but works of severe logic.
I write now to beg that, if you have not sent your tragedy, you may
remember to send 'Antonio' with it, which I have not yet seen, and
likewise my Campbell's 'Pleasures of Hope', which Wordsworth wishes to
see.
Have you seen the second volume of the 'Lyrical Ballads', and the
preface prefixed to the first? I should judge of a man's heart and
intellect precisely according to the degree and intensity of the
admiration with which he read these poems.
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