He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the
captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.
Have you not seen the nightingale,
A pilgrim coop'd into a cage,
How doth she chant her wonted tale,
In that her lonely hermitage!
Even there her charming melody doth prove
That all her boughs are trees, her cage a grove.*
* Roger L'Estrange.
Indeed, it is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is
irrepressible, unconfinable; that when the real world is shut out,
it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power, can
conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions, to make
solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of the dungeon. Such was
the world of pomp and pageant that lived round Tasso in his dismal
cell at Ferrara, when he conceived the splendid scenes of his
Jerusalem; and we may consider the "King's Quair," composed by
James, during his captivity at Windsor, as another of those
beautiful breakings-forth of the soul from the restraint and gloom
of the prison house.
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