dots-menu
×

Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  614 William Shakespeare 1564-1616 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

614 William Shakespeare 1564-1616 John Bartlett

 
NUMBER:614
AUTHOR:William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
QUOTATION: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:
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
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
ATTRIBUTION:A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act v. Sc. 1.  [text]
WORKS:William Shakespeare Collection.