'
Other lines came back to him, and yet others--a riot of verse. His soul
was filled with the music of rhymes and rhythmic measures. He was
overjoyed; coming to him thus spontaneously and unexpectedly, this
poetic agitation caused him inexpressible happiness. And he gave ear to
the music, delighting himself in rich imagery, in rare epithets, in the
luminous metaphors, the exquisite harmonies, the subtle refinements
which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of
the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the
fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the
magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full
force of the sentiment of a contemporary poet--Verse is everything!
A perfect line of verse is absolute, immutable, deathless. It encloses a
thought as within a clearly marked circle which no force can break; it
belongs no more to the poet, it belongs to all and yet to none, as do
space, light, all things intransitory and perpetual. When the poet is
about to bring forth one of these deathless lines he is warned by a
divine torrent of joy which sweeps over his soul.
Andrea half closed his eyes to prolong this delicious tremor which with
him was ever the forerunner of inspiration, and more especially of
poetic inspiration, and he determined in a moment upon the metrical form
into which he would pour his thoughts, like wine into a cup--the sonnet.
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