“With gold and silver covers every part,
And hides with ornament his want of art.”

Be true to your own soul, and do not try to express the thought of another.  “If some people,” says Ruskin, “really see angels where others see only empty space, let them paint angels:  only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.”  Unhappily this is precisely what so many will attempt, inspired by the success of the angelic painter.  Nor will the failure of others warn them.

Whatever is sincerely felt or believed, whatever forms part of the imaginative experience, and is not simply imitation or hearsay, may fitly be given to the world, and will always maintain an infinite superiority over imitative splendour; because although it by no means follows that whatever has formed part of the artist’s experience must be impressive, or can do without artistic presentation, yet his artistic power will always be greater over his own material than over another’s.  Emerson has well remarked “that those facts, words, persons which dwell in a man’s memory without his being able to say why, remain because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended.  They are symbols of value to him as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds.  What attracts my attention shall have it; as I will go to the man who knocks at my door while a thousand persons as worthy go by it to whom I give no regard.  It is enough that these particulars speak to me.  A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, faces, a few incidents have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance if you measure them by ordinary standards.  They relate to your gift.  Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, or cast about for illustrations and facts more usual in literature.”

In the notes to the last edition of his poems, Wordsworth specified the particular occasions which furnished him with particular images.  It was the things he had seen which he put into his verses; and that is why they affect us.  It matters little whether the poet draws his images directly from present experience, or indirectly from memory—­whether the sight of the slow-sailing swan, that “floats double swan and shadow” be at once transferred to the scene of the poem he is writing, or come back upon him in after years to complete some picture in his mind; enough that the image be suggested, and not sought.