The imagination, therefore, is essentially creative. I consider imagination either as primary or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.
The secondary I consider as an echo of the former; it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealise and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects are essentially fixed and dead.
Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and definites. The fancy is no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space, and blended with, and modified by, choice. But, equally with the ordinary memory, it must receive its materials ready made, from the law of association.
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry--the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of Nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm which accidents of light and shade, moonlight or sunset, diffuse over a familiar landscape appeared to represent the practicability of combining both.
The thought suggested itself that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek them.
In this idea originated the plan of the "Lyrical Ballads," in which my endeavours were to be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to attempt to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us--an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.