The fable which is truly and naturally composed, so as to please the imagination of a child, harmonious though strange like a wild-flower, is to the wise man an apothegm and admits his wisest interpretation.
When we read that Bacchus made the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so that they leaped into the sea, mistaking it for “a meadow full of flowers,” and so became dolphins, we are not concerned about the historical truth of this, but rather a higher, poetical truth. We seem to hear the music of a thought, and care not if our intellect be not gratified.
(Undated entry)
