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feels the relation between himself, the Alpine wonders, and God. In the very word "thou," in the first line, there is a rich complex of all these elements, which one can appreciate in part by reading the entire poem through, then coming back and recognizing the elements which lead to the personification of Mont Blanc and are involved in the apostrophized pronoun.

The poem presents a wonderful variety of sense elements, in terms of almost every sense, a bewildering succession of visual, auditory, motor, tactual, and other images, each the key to a more Sup- complicated experience. A remarkable feature is the frequent pression of Artic- emphasis of intimate sense elements by the direct negation and ulative suppression of articulative sense elements. Audition is thus reElements pressed in the following:

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Here a vivid auditory image is brought forth only to be expunged in the interest of imagery more deeply significant to the total experience. What remains in this silence is a very complicated mass of motor strains and organic sensations involved in a feeling of awe, and a sympathetic feeling of the upward thrust of the great mountain. The imagery involved in silence may include an auditory element, as what we call silence is usually only relatively such, but its essential elements are of an organic and kinesthetic nature. This suppression of the auditory is found again in the following lines:

Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?.

And who commanded (and the silence came)

Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

And an auditory element is suppressed even more precipitately in
the following passage:

Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines sloped amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts.

To be sure, here is a sudden arrest of various images, of which the motor elements are as prominent as the auditory, but it is clear

that the suppression of the violently auditory is in the interest of a deeper expression of meaning through the sense elements more intimately involved in an attitude conditioned by silence. These passages also illustrate how sense imagery gains by refinement. Here are intense motion and sound suddenly replaced by silence and the tensions involved in the stoppage of motion. But the auditory and motor elements which remain as a sort of echo or back-fire have gained a peculiar effectiveness.

A hymn involving the scenery of the Alps may be expected to have visual imagery in profusion, and such is the case. However, the visual imagery has rich and vivid intimate sense connotations. The early morning darkness about the mountain is thus pictured:

Around thee and above

Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge.

This is far more than visual. The one word "deep" represents, for
most people, a rich complex of intimate sense elements, while other
descriptive words unlock other complexes each of which may
involve as many other sense and feeling factors. There are tactual
and kinesthetic blends involved in such words as "substantial"
and "ebon mass," while the figure of the peak as a wedge piercing
the sky brings in the imagery of pressure, pain, and motor tensions.
At certain climaxes of the poem, when the most deeply feelingful
and significant values seem to be reached, there is a sublimation of
the visual as well as the auditory elements, and an apparent blend-
ing and fusion of all the sense experiences, a sort of sensual auto-
intoxication, culminating in an ecstatic condition.

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought

Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy:

Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused

Into the mighty vision passing—there

As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

Here is vision present to the eyes but "vanished from my thought." It is softened, subdued, submerged, fused into a vague sensory mass, until the worshiper forgets the visual presence and

Relation of Intimate to Visual

Elements

The

Experi

ence

Culminating

in

Ecstasy

worships the Invisible. The whole experience is described as like that of music heard with the ears, but eliciting so direct a response from the intimate senses that "we know not we are listening to it." The more significant things are the feelings of elation, "the dilating Soul," the feeling of expansion which accompanies that of the union with or internalizing of the great objective symbol. The blotting out of vision in the experience of seeing Mont Blanc seems at first a loss of the essential element. But it is really in the interest of a fuller description of the total experience. To know how dependent such a description is upon intimate sense factors, try to describe Mont Blanc in purely visual terms, or put together the purely visual elements in Coleridge's poem. Vision is essential to the experience, but without the more deep-seated and feelingful elements the experience is void of appreciation and meaning. A purely visual description of Mont Blanc would be a grotesque verbal cartoon.

The final complex, the grand finale of the hymn appears to center in audition. The streams, the storms, the avalanches, as well as the pine trees with their "soft and soul-like sounds," are called upon to praise the name of God. With all the significance of this cumulative auditory imagery, the concept "God" involves what is perhaps the greatest possible sense-feeling complex. Here it certainly involves, as elements in its setting, all the complexes of the entire hymn, but these with all their richness are to the full God complex as a bucket of water to the ocean. The poet recognizes the limitations of anything except the fullest content of all the blended senses, and this he can express only by capitalizing the word GOD.

Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD.

XVI

Sense Elements In Hindu Literature

acter

ORIENTAL poetry differs widely in its sense imagery from the poetry of the West. There is a richness in its varied sense appeal which is, to us, exotic. It is but indifferently imitated by any of our poets. This quality, which is found in the sacred literature of Charthe Hebrews, the Persians, the Chinese, and the Hindus, is con- istics of ditioned by the directness of appeal to the intimate senses, the high Oriental valuation of the affective elements in religious experience, and the Poetry oriental emphasis upon the internal realities. Ours is a different temper. If we seek the inner realities it is through the mediation of the external, and hence the articulative senses are relatively overestimated. We have a rich devotional literature, but it is largely based upon our oriental sacred books, while the bulk of our religious writings is argumentative, intellectual, and rationalistic. There is a natural basis for this distinction between East and West, and invidious comparisons are unwarranted, but it is well to remember that for our deepest expressions of religious experience we still go to the ancient East.

Vedic

There is a peculiar, almost intoxicating richness in the imagery of the Vedas, those ancient hymns in which the people of India worship the gods of their traditional pantheon. In the hymn which follows, allowance must be made for the figurative language in which the imagery is clothed. Being addressed to nature divin- The ities, the Maruts, or Storm-gods, it is naturally full of the imagery Hymns of the open air, the clouds, thunder and lightning, and rain. There is a brilliant visual imagery, and auditory elements also play an important part, but most noticeable of all are the intimate sense images which enrich and internalize the experience of the worshiper. It lacks the sublime depth of the Hebrew Psalms, and the feeling of restraint which we find in them, but it is a real reflection of the inner experiences of those who worshiped the gods of the

storm.

TO THE MARUTS 1

1. Those who glance forth like wives and yokefellows, the powerful sons of Rudra on their way, they, the Maruts, have indeed made heaven and earth

1 Mueller, op. cit., Vol. XXXII, p. 126ff.

to grow; they, the strong and wild, delight in the sacrifices.

2. When grown up, they attained to greatness: The Rudras have established their seat in the sky. While singing their song and increasing their vigour, the sons of Prisni have clothed themselves in beauty.

3. When these sons of the cow adorn themselves with glittering ornaments, the brilliant ones put bright weapons on their bodies. They drive away every adversary; fatness (rain) streams along their paths.

4. When you, the powerful who shine with your spears, shaking even what is unshakable by strength, -when you, O Maruts, the manly hosts, had yoked the spotted deer, swift as thought, to your chariots:

5. When you had yoked the spotted deer before your chariots, hurling the stone (thunderbolt) in the fight, then the streams of the red (horse) rush forth: like a skin with water they water the earth.

6. May the swiftly-gliding, swift-winged horses carry you hither! Come forth with your arms! Sit down on the grass-pile; a wide seat has been made for you. Rejoice, O Maruts, in the sweet food.

7. Strong in themselves, they grew with might; they stepped to the firmament, they made their seat wide. When Vishnu saved the enrapturing Soma, the Maruts sat down like birds on their beloved altar.

8. Like heroes indeed thirsting for fight they rush about: like combatants eager for glory they have striven in battles. All beings are afraid of the Maruts; they are men terrible to behold; like kings.

9. When the clever Tvashtar had turned the well-made golden, thousand-edged thunderbolt, Indra takes it to perform his manly deeds; he slew Vritra, he forced out the stream of water.

10. By their power they pushed the well aloft, they clove asunder the rock (cloud), however strong. Blowing forth their voice, the bounteous Maruts performed, while drunk of Soma, their glorious deeds.

11. They pushed the well (cloud) athwart this way, they poured out the spring to the thirsty Gotama. The Maruts with beautiful splendor approach him with help, they in their own ways satisfied the desires of the sage.

12. The shelters which you have for him who praises you, grant them threefold to the man who

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