“I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:
“For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the Daffodils.”
Wordsworth, notably among poets, has the gift of expressing the inexpressible, of clothing in language some fleeting sensation which seems, of its exquisiteness and illusiveness, undefinable. There are lines of his that follow one like a phrase of music.
“The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion.”
“The light that never was on sea or land.”
“... Old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.”
The first effect of any sight of surpassing beauty, indeed of any strong emotion of admiration, is an instant desire of expression; then comes the pain of inarticulateness to most of us--there is a swelling of the soul and no outlet! That is why, when someone else may have perfectly said what for us is inexpressible, there is a double joy in discoveries.
To wander from our lilies to flowers of speech and description: the perfect phrase has in itself a delight that almost equals that of the perfect thought.
For those who, like ourselves, work in words, however humbly--poor stone-breakers compared to such as make the marble live--the mere art in the setting of the words themselves has a fascination of its own. It is not only the idea--it is sometimes not even the idea that enchants. There is a magic of cadence alone. Sometimes, indeed, just a conjunction of two words seems to make a chord.
To go further, a single word may ring out like a note upon the mind. The Italian _Amore_, for instance--who can deny that it echoes richly and nobly? It is a sound of gravity and passion mixed. It is like the first vibrating stroke of a master-hand on the ’cello. Did not the resonance of the word itself go as far as the meaning to inspire Jacopone with his ecstatic hymn wherein he plays upon it like a musician upon a note which calls, insists, repeats itself, for ever dominates or haunts the theme?--
“Amore, amore, che si m’hai ferito Altro che amore non posso gridare: Amore, amore, teco so unito....”
You could not take the word “love” and ring the changes in this way, not even upon the kindred-sounding _Amour_, losing in its “ou” exactly the tone of solemnity that makes the Italian equivalent so royal.