He reaches the sublime without any apparent effort.

Moreover he is absolutely without humor, and so he often fails to see the small step that separates the sublime from the ridiculous.

The spring sun flashes a rapier thrust Through the dingy school-house pane, A shining scimitar, free from rust, That cuts the cloud of the drifting dust, And scatters a golden rain; And the boy at the battered desk within Is dreaming a dream sublime, For study's a wrong, and school a sin, When the joys of woods and fields begin, And it's just birds'-nesting time.

The passage exemplifies the sublime in narrative.

From thine own self thy rule of action draw; That which thou dostwhat charms theeis thy Law, And founds to every race a code sublime What pleases Genius gives a Law to Time!

If he calls a leopard a "libbard," he only imitates the most sublime of English poets; and the first word of his petition, "Gib us this day our daily bread," is pronounced as it rose from the lips of Luther.

They soared up grandly into the open blue, like so many cathedral spires, drawing about them that air of solitude and stillness which accompanies always the sublime in Nature.

In his youth he wrote: "Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time.

Lo, his imperial brow I see From foul usurping vapours free! 'Twere glorious now his side to climb, Boldly to scale his top sublime, And thenceMy Muse, these flights forbear,

One who sees the rest of Europe and not Switzerland, will not miss any particular links in the historic chain of social, religious and political development of the human race, but he will not have seen the sublime in nature.

It is not the mere knowledge of Alcyone that necessitates the sublime.

I cannot think what subject would suit your epic genius,some philosophical subject, I conjecture, in which shall be blended the sublime of poetry and of science.