An auxiliary light
Came from my mind which on the setting sun
Bestowed new splendor--
[Footnote: _The Prelude_.]
Occasionally the sudden lift of these submerged ideas to consciousness
is expressed by the figure of an earthquake. Aurora Leigh says that upon
her first impulse to write, her nature was shaken,
As the earth
Plunges in fury, when the internal fires
Have reached and pricked her heart, and throwing flat
The marts and temples, the triumphal gates
And towers of observation, clears herself
To elemental freedom.
We have a grander expression of the idea from Robert Browning, who
relates how the vision of _Sordello_ arises to consciousness:
Upthrust, out-staggering on the world,
Subsiding into shape, a darkness rears
Its outline, kindles at the core--.
Is this to say that the poet's intuitions, apparently so sudden, have
really been long germinating in the obscure depths of his mind? Then it
is in tune with the idea, so prevalent in English verse, that in sleep a
mysterious undercurrent of imaginative power becomes accessible to the
poet.
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