We are
persuaded that almost on the instant that it was felt the original
emotion of the poem was endorsed Perhaps it came to the poet as the pain
of a particular and personal experience; but in a little or a long
while--creative time is not measured by days or years--it became, for
him, a part of the texture of the general life. It became a
manifestation of life, almost, nay wholly, in the sacramental sense, a
veritable epiphany. The manifold and inexhaustible quality of life was
focused into a single revelation. A critic's words do not lend
themselves to the necessary precision. We should need to write with
exactly the same power as Mr Hardy when he wrote 'the hope-hour stroked
its sum,' to make our meaning likewise inevitable. The word 'revelation'
is fertile in false suggestion; the creative act of power which we seek
to elucidate is an act of plenary apprehension, by which one
manifestation, one form of life, one experience is seen in its rigorous
relation to all other and to all possible manifestations, forms, and
experiences.
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