"Poetry, my life, my eagle!" [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] cries Mrs.
Browning, likening herself to Ganymede, ravished from his sheep to the
summit of Olympus. The same attitude is apparent in most of her poems,
for Mrs. Browning, in singing mood, is precisely like a child in a
swing, shouting with delight at every fresh sensation of soaring.
[Footnote: See J. G. Percival, _Genius Awaking_, for the same
figure.]
Again, the crash of the poet's inspiration upon his ordinary modes of
thought is compared to "fearful claps of thunder," by Keats [Footnote:
See _Sleep and Poetry_.] and others. [Footnote: See _The Master_, A. E.
Cheney.] Or, more often, his moment of sudden insight seems a lightning
flash upon the dark ways in which he is ordinarily groping. Keats says
that his early visions were seen as through a rift of sheet lightning.
[Footnote: See _The Epistle to George Keats_.] Emerson's impression is
the same; visions come "as if life were a thunderstorm wherein you can
see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.
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