Pursuing you in your transitions,
In other Motes－
Of other Myths
Your requisition be.
The Prism never held the Hues,
It only heard them play－
In other Motes－
Of other Myths
Your requisition be.
The Prism never held the Hues,
It only heard them play－
(F.1664/J.1602)
[1] you:: Washington Irving.
[2-4] Motes, Myths, requisition:: Washington Irving's demand was something trivial and unrealistic.
[5] Prism:: prism of poetry, a way to decompose poetry to separate parts. Hues:: shouts, cries; colors, tints.
[5, 6] never held, only heard:: prism of poetry cannot catch the hues (colors) of poetry, but can only hear the hues (cries).
I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been surrounded with fancied beings; with mere airy nothings, conjured up by poetic power; yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jacques soliloquize beneath his oak; had beheld the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through the woodlands. ─ Stratford-on-Avon, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1820)
My fancy associates it with the history of those old times, the relievoed but somewhat barbarous forms of which the prism of poetry softens down. ─ Historical and Literary Tour of a Foreigner in England and Scotland (1825)
We ought not to look on the affairs of life through the prism of poetry. It is like those ingenious glasses which magnify objects. They will show to you, in all their brilliancy and magnificence, the spheres of Heaven; but turn them towards the earth, and you will indeed behold gigantic forms, but dark, vague and confused. ─ The New-England Magazine, Volume IX (1835)