Nor has the imagination been alone in its strange workings; it has
whispered, as it always does, its secrets to the heart, and succeeded in
arousing its ever-ready affections, so that we cannot help feeling a
degree of interest in the unknown, whose emotions we have followed
through the night, reading their history in his alternating footsteps:
_for sounds impress themselves immediately upon the feelings, exciting,
not abstract or antagonistic thought, but uniting humanity in concrete
feeling_. (See vol. i.)
As the imagination necessarily associates different feelings with
different orders of Rhythm, it is the task of the Poet to select those
in the closest conformity with the emotions he is struggling to excite.
It is positively certain that we not only naturally and intuitively
_associate_ distinctive feelings with different orders of rhythmical
sounds, but that varied emotions are _awakened_ by them. Some rhythms
inspire calmness, some sublime and stately courage, some energy and
aggressive force, some stir the spirit to the most daring deeds, some,
as in our maddening Tarantulas, produce a restless excitement through
the whole nervous system, some excite mere joyousness, some whisper love
through every fibre of the heart, and some lead us in their holy calm
and unbroken order to the throne of God. Why is this? We need not look
in the region of the understanding for the philosophy of that which is
to be found only in the living tide of basic emotions.
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