Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VI. Fancy. 1904. | | | | Poems of Fancy: I. The Imagination | | Imagination | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
| | From “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Act V. Sc. 1. |
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THE LUNATIC, the lover, 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: | 5 |
| 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 unknown, the poet’s pen | |
| Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing | 10 |
| A local habitation and a name. | | | |
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