The dews of the evening most carefully shun,
  They are the tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.

After the transgression of Adam, Milton, with other appearances of sympathizing Nature, thus marks the immediate consequence,

  Sky lowered, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
  Wept at completion of the mortal sin.

The associating link is the same in each instance:  Dew and rain, not distinguishable from the liquid substance of tears, are employed as indications of sorrow.  A flash of surprise is the effect in the former case; a flash of surprise, and nothing more; for the nature of things does not sustain the combination.  In the latter, the effects from the act, of which there is this immediate consequence and visible sign, are so momentous, that the mind acknowledges the justice and reasonableness of the sympathy in nature so manifested; and the sky weeps drops of water as if with human eyes, as ’Earth had before trembled from her entrails, and Nature given a second groan.’

Finally, I will refer to Cotton’s Ode upon Winter, an admirable composition, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he lived, for a general illustration of the characteristics of Fancy.  The middle part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of Winter, with his retinue, as ‘A palsied king,’ and yet a military monarch,—­advancing for conquest with his army; the several bodies of which, and their arms and equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a profusion of fanciful comparisons, which indicate on the part of the poet extreme activity of intellect, and a correspondent hurry of delightful feeling.  Winter retires from the foe into his fortress, where

          a magazine
  Of sovereign juice is cellared in;
  Liquor that will the siege maintain
  Should Phoebus ne’er return again.

Though myself a water drinker, I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing what follows, as an instance still more happy of Fancy employed in the treatment of feeling than, in its preceding passages, the Poem supplies of her management of forms.

  ’Tis that, that gives the poet rage,
  And thaws the gelid blood of age;
  Matures the young, restores the old,
  And makes the fainting coward bold.

  It lays the careful head to rest,
  Calms palpitations in the breast,
  Renders our lives’ misfortune sweet;

* * * * *

  Then let the chill Sirocco blow,
  And gird us round with hills of snow,
  Or else go whistle to the shore,
  And make the hollow mountains roar,

  Whilst we together jovial sit
  Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit,
  Where, though bleak winds confine us home
  Our fancies round the world shall roam.

  We’ll think of all the Friends we know,
  And drink to all worth drinking to;
  When having drunk all thine and mine,
  We rather shall want healths than wine.