The difference between imagination and fancy, in view of this poetry of wit, is a very narrow one. Obviously, an image which is immediately and unintentionally ridiculous is merely a fancy. In the poem "Upon Appleton House," Marvell falls in with one of these undesirable images, describing the attitude of the house toward its master:-- Yet thus the laden house does sweat, And scarce endures the master great; But, where he comes, the swelling hall Stirs, and the square grows spherical; which, whatever its intention, is more absurd than it was intended to be. Marvell also falls into the even commoner error of images which are over-developed or distracting; which support nothing but their own misshapen bodies:-- And now the salmon-fishers moist Their leathern boats begin to hoist; And, like Antipodes in shoes, Have shod their heads in their canoes. Of this sort of image a choice collection may be found in Johnson's "Life of Cowley." But the images in the "Coy Mistress" are not only witty, but satisfy the elucidation of Imagination given by Coleridge:-- "This power . . . reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement. . . ." Coleridge's statement applies also to the following verses, which are selected because of their similarity, and because they illustrate the marked caesura which Marvell often introduces in a short line:-- The tawny mowers enter next, Who seem like Israelites to be Walking on foot through a green sea. And now the meadows fresher dyed, Whose grass, with moister colour dashed, Seems as green silks but newly washed. He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night. Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within. The whole poem, from which the last of these quotations is drawn ("The Nymph and the Fawn"), is built upon a very slight foundation, and we can imagine what some of our modern practitioners of slight themes would have made of it. But we need not descend to an invidious contemporaneity to point the difference. Here are six lines from "The Nymph and the Fawn":-- I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness; And all the spring-time of the year It only loved to be there. And here are five lines from "The Nymph's Song to Hylas" in the "Life and Death of Jason," by William Morris:-- I know a little garden close Set thick with lily and red rose. Where I would wander if I might From dewy dawn to dewy night, And have one with me wandering.