Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend,
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
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 into shapes, and gives the airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1.
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