By James Harvey Stout (deceased). This material is now in the public domain. The complete collection of Mr. Stout's writing is now at http://stout.mybravenet.com/public_html/h/ >
A poet may write about, as Yeats said, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." The poem might tell a story that is not physically real, with thoughts that have no physical reality themselves. Yet the poem expresses a truth.
The "imaginary garden" is the image-filled poem. But the garden might also be daydreams, night-dreams, or the human world which some mystics say is illusion although it expresses a type of truth.
Within them all is that essential reality -- of those real toads.
