Appearances

( Pac chia rot to, with other Poems , 1876.) Metaphysicians would explain this poem by an e ay on the a ociation of ideas; strong as imagination is, it can never exceed experience which has come to us through sight. Feelings are a ociated with one another according as they have been operant in more or le frequent succe ion. Reasoning may a ociate ideas, but for force and permanence our actual sight, and contact are the wonder-workers in this department of soul-life. Nothing can beautify the place where we have in the past suffered some great mental distre or wrong; so no place can ever be unbeautiful where the true lover wins his life’s prize. When the upholsterer’s art does more for a room than the memory of a first love, that love is not of the eternal sort our poet sings.