It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. What the Romanticists Said Shelley s thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. Man is the same rancorous beast now that he was from the beginning, and if the Christ they profess to worship re-appeared, they would again crucify him. We are as much as we see . . .
Every child begins the world again. . .
To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired . . . The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Thus the inner life shall triumph over the outer world. The Romantic poets . Sans Merci typify this situation in the Romantic poem, which characteristically haunts, as Geoffrey Hartman has observed, borderlands and liminal territories . . .