What fire within my veins then play’d!
One’s mental set at any given point in life is determined by the cumulative weight of reminiscences such as these, deposited at different levels in the mineshaft of the psyche, and one’s surroundings at any given moment may serve as the stimulus that brings a particular reminiscence to the surface. Since language is the vehicle of thought, nothing else has the power to frame one’s emotions to the same degree, and poetry of all linguistic products is the most powerful repository on which to draw in realizing the inner dialogue that Plato calls the silent converse of the soul with itself.