Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by
chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his
eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal
colouring--yellow, red, brown--and with that he carries home a
sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the
falling close of the year. So--and just so, save more deftly--the Poet
abstracts:--
_Where is the prime of Summer--the green prime--
The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three
On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime
Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!_
(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the
autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a
Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He
was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.)
* * * * *
Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some
hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an
interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his
hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null.
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