For him there is no boundary-line between the two, the one is as real and actual as the other.

In his hands that old trick of the poets, the simile, takes on a new and surprising form.

He does not enforce the creations of his imagination by the analogy of natural appearances; his instinct is just the opposite--to describe and illumine nature by a reference to the creatures of thought.

Other poets, Keats for instance, or Tennyson, or the older poets like Dante and Homer, might compare ghosts flying from an enchanter like leaves flying before the wind.

They might describe a poet wrapped up in his dreams as being like a bird singing invisible in the brightness of the sky.