My Library

himself is beyond all question as deeply in love as he can get; and these are the reasons why neither describes the person who attended with him alike. That prince of soldiers, who because he was so terrible in war, when he shook his spear, the English call Shake-the-spear, says that — “ ‘Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool Reason comprehends. The lover, the lunatic, and the poet are of imagination All compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold— That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things, The poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives To airy nothings a local habitation and a name.’ “ ‘But what, my dear, has all this to do with the questions I asked you? Look here, Ninette; I