of deeper significance is not confined to rational propositions. Single words,[1] and conjunctions of words, effects of light on land and sea, odors and musical sounds, all bring it when the mind is tuned aright. Most of us can remember the strangely moving power of passages in certain poems read when we were young, irrational doorways as they were through which the mystery of fact, the wildness and the pang of life, stole into our hearts and thrilled them. The words have now perhaps become mere polished surfaces for us; but lyric poetry and music are alive and significant only in proportion as they fetch these vague vistas of a life continuous with our own, beckoning and inviting, yet ever eluding our pursuit. We are alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the arts according as we have kept or lost this mystical susceptibility.
A more pronounced step forward on the mystical ladder is found in an extremely frequent phenomenon, that sudden feeling, namely, which sometimes sweeps over us, of having 'been here before,' as if at some indefinite past time, in just this place, with just these people, we were already saying just these things. As Tennyson writes:
"Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams—
"Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare."[2]
- ↑ 'Mesopotamia' is the stock comic instance.—An excellent old German lady, who had done some traveling in her day, used to describe to me her Sehnsucht that she might yet visit 'Phīladelphiā,' whose wondrous name had always haunted her imagination. Of John Foster it is said that "single words (as chalcedony), or the names of ancient heroes, had a mighty fascination over him. 'At any time the word hermit was enough to transport him.' The words woods and forests would produce the most powerful emotion." Foster's Life, by Ryland, New York, 1846, p. 3.
- ↑ The Two Voices. In a letter to Mr. B. P. Blood, Tennyson reports of himself as follows:—
