Beautiful Poems (and nothing else): on the limits of reading with concepts

Most people see with their intellects
much more often than with their eyes.
Instead of colored spaces, they become
aware of concepts. Something whitish,
cubical, erect, its planes broken by the
sparkle of glass, is immediately a house
for them—the House ! —a complex
idea, a combination of abstract qualities.
If they change position, the movement
of the rows of windows, the
translation of surfaces which continuously
alters their sensuous perceptions,
all this escapes them, for their
concept remains the same. They perceive
with a dictionary rather than
with the retina; and they approach
objects so blindly, they have such a
vague notion of the difficulties and
pleasures of vision, that they have
invented beautiful views. Of the rest
they are unaware.

Paul Valéry, The Method of Leonardo