Let us now survey the power and scope of Wordsworth’s imagination, considered in its intellectual manifestation. Here nothing bounds its activity but its sentiments. It is descriptive, pictorial, reflective, shaping, creative, and ecstatic; it can body forth abstract ideas in sensible imagery; it can organize, as in “The White Doe,” a whole poem round one central idea; it can make audible in the melody of words, shades of feeling and thought which elude the grasp of imagery; it can fuse and diffuse itself at pleasure, animating, coloring, vitalizing every thing it touches. In description it approaches near absolute perfection, giving not only the scene as it lies upon the clear mirror of the perceptive imagination, but representing it in its life and motion as well as form. The following, from “The Night Piece,” is one out of a multitude of instances: He looks up—the clouds are split Asunder—and above his head he sees The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens. There, in a black blue vault she sails along, Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss Drive as she drives. In the description of the appearance of the White Doe, we have not only form, hue and motion, but the feeling of wonder that the fair creature excites, and the rhythm which musically expresses the supernatural character of the visitant—all embodied in one vivid picture: The only voice that you can hear Is the river murmuring near. —When soft!—the dusky trees between, And down the path through the open green, Where is no living thing to be seen; And through yon gateway, where is found, Beneath the arch with ivy bound, Free entrance to the church-yard ground— _Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,_ _Comes gliding in serene and slow,_ _Soft and silent as a dream,_ _A solitary Doe!_ White she is as lily of June, And beauteous as the silver moon When out of sight the clouds are driven And she is left alone in heaven; Or like a ship, some gentle day, In sunshine sailing far away, A glittering ship that hath the plain Or ocean for her own domain. In the following we have a mental description, so subtle and so sweet as to make “the sense of satisfaction ache” with its felicity: And she has smiles to earth unknown, Smiles that, with motion of their own, Do spread and sink and rise; That come and go, with endless play, And ever as they pass away, _Are hidden in her eyes._ This is from the little poem to “Louisa.” It is curious that Wordsworth, in the octavo edition of his works, published when he was seventy-seven years old, omits this stanza. It was so refined that he had probably lost the power to perceive its delicate beauty, and dismissed it as meaningless.