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diff --git a/1336.txt b/1336.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d35f474 --- /dev/null +++ b/1336.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1299 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Shelley, by Francis Thompson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Shelley + An Essay + + +Author: Francis Thompson + +Release Date: March 27, 2005 [eBook #1336] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY*** + + +Credit + + + + +Transcribed from the 1914 Burns & Oates edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +SHELLEY: AN ESSAY + + +The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of saints, +during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief +glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has preserved for +her own. The palm and the laurel, Dominic and Dante, sanctity and song, +grew together in her soil: she has retained the palm, but forgone the +laurel. Poetry in its widest sense, {1} and when not professedly +irreligious, has been too much and too long among many Catholics either +misprised or distrusted; too much and too generally the feeling has been +that it is at best superfluous, at worst pernicious, most often +dangerous. Once poetry was, as she should be, the lesser sister and +helpmate of the Church; the minister to the mind, as the Church to the +soul. But poetry sinned, poetry fell; and, in place of lovingly +reclaiming her, Catholicism cast her from the door to follow the feet of +her pagan seducer. The separation has been ill for poetry; it has not +been well for religion. + +Fathers of the Church (we would say), pastors of the Church, pious laics +of the Church: you are taking from its walls the panoply of Aquinas--take +also from its walls the psaltery of Alighieri. Unroll the precedents of +the Church's past; recall to your minds that Francis of Assisi was among +the precursors of Dante; that sworn to Poverty he forswore not Beauty, +but discerned through the lamp Beauty the Light God; that he was even +more a poet in his miracles than in his melody; that poetry clung round +the cowls of his Order. Follow his footsteps; you who have blessings for +men, have you no blessing for the birds? Recall to your memory that, in +their minor kind, the love poems of Dante shed no less honour on +Catholicism than did the great religious poem which is itself pivoted on +love; that in singing of heaven he sang of Beatrice--this supporting +angel was still carven on his harp even when he stirred its strings in +Paradise. What you theoretically know, vividly realise: that with many +the religion of beauty must always be a passion and a power, that it is +only evil when divorced from the worship of the Primal Beauty. Poetry is +the preacher to men of the earthly as you of the Heavenly Fairness; of +that earthly fairness which God has fashioned to His own image and +likeness. You proclaim the day which the Lord has made, and Poetry +exults and rejoices in it. You praise the Creator for His works, and she +shows you that they are very good. Beware how you misprise this potent +ally, for hers is the art of Giotto and Dante: beware how you misprise +this insidious foe, for hers is the art of modern France and of Byron. +Her value, if you know it not, God knows, and know the enemies of God. If +you have no room for her beneath the wings of the Holy One, there is +place for her beneath the webs of the Evil One: whom you discard, he +embraces; whom you cast down from an honourable seat, he will advance to +a haughty throne; the brows you dislaurel of a just respect, he will bind +with baleful splendours; the stone which you builders reject, he will +make his head of the corner. May she not prophesy in the temple? then +there is ready for her the tripod of Delphi. Eye her not askance if she +seldom sing directly of religion: the bird gives glory to God though it +sings only of its innocent loves. Suspicion creates its own cause; +distrust begets reason for distrust. This beautiful, wild, feline +Poetry, wild because left to range the wilds, restore to the hearth of +your charity, shelter under the rafter of your Faith; discipline her to +the sweet restraints of your household, feed her with the meat from your +table, soften her with the amity of your children; tame her, fondle her, +cherish her--you will no longer then need to flee her. Suffer her to +wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round the foot of the Cross! + +There is a change of late years: the Wanderer is being called to her +Father's house, but we would have the call yet louder, we would have the +proffered welcome more unstinted. There are still stray remnants of the +old intolerant distrust. It is still possible for even a French +historian of the Church to enumerate among the articles cast upon +Savonarola's famous pile, _poesies erotiques, tant des anciens que des +modernes, livres impies ou corrupteurs, Ovide, Tibulle, Properce, pour ne +nommer que les plus connus, Dante, Petrarque, Boccace, tous ces auteurs +Italiens qui deja souillaient les ames et ruinaient les moeurs, en creant +ou perfectionnant la langue_. {2} Blameworthy carelessness at the least, +which can class the _Vita Nuova_ with the _Ars Amandi_ and the +_Decameron_! And among many English Catholics the spirit of poetry is +still often received with a restricted Puritanical greeting, rather than +with the traditionally Catholic joyous openness. + +We ask, therefore, for a larger interest, not in purely Catholic poetry, +but in poetry generally, poetry in its widest sense. With few +exceptions, whatsoever in our best poets is great and good to the non- +Catholic, is great and good also to the Catholic; and though Faber threw +his edition of Shelley into the fire and never regretted the act; though, +moreover, Shelley is so little read among us that we can still tolerate +in our Churches the religious parody which Faber should have thrown after +his three-volumed Shelley; {3}--in spite of this, we are not disposed to +number among such exceptions that straying spirit of light. + +* * * * * + +We have among us at the present day no lineal descendant, in the poetical +order, of Shelley; and any such offspring of the aboundingly spontaneous +Shelley is hardly possible, still less likely, on account of the defect +by which (we think) contemporary poetry in general, as compared with the +poetry of the early nineteenth century, is mildewed. That defect is the +predominance of art over inspiration, of body over soul. We do not say +the _defect_ of inspiration. The warrior is there, but he is hampered by +his armour. Writers of high aim in all branches of literature, even when +they are not--as Mr. Swinburne, for instance, is--lavish in expression, +are generally over-deliberate in expression. Mr. Henry James, +delineating a fictitious writer clearly intended to be the ideal of an +artist, makes him regret that he has sometimes allowed himself to take +the second-best word instead of searching for the best. Theoretically, +of course, one ought always to try for the best word. But practically, +the habit of excessive care in word-selection frequently results in loss +of spontaneity; and, still worse, the habit of always taking the best +word too easily becomes the habit of always taking the most ornate word, +the word most removed from ordinary speech. In consequence of this, +poetic diction has become latterly a kaleidoscope, and one's chief +curiosity is as to the precise combinations into which the pieces will be +shifted. There is, in fact, a certain band of words, the Praetorian +cohorts of poetry, whose prescriptive aid is invoked by every aspirant to +the poetical purple, and without whose prescriptive aid none dares aspire +to the poetical purple; against these it is time some banner should be +raised. Perhaps it is almost impossible for a contemporary writer quite +to evade the services of the free-lances whom one encounters under so +many standards. {4} But it is at any rate curious to note that the +literary revolution against the despotic diction of Pope seems issuing, +like political revolutions, in a despotism of its own making. + +This, then, we cannot but think, distinguishes the literary period of +Shelley from our own. It distinguishes even the unquestionable treasures +and masterpieces of to-day from similar treasures and masterpieces of the +precedent day; even _the Lotus-Eaters_ from _Kubla-Khan_; even Rossetti's +ballads from _Christabel_. It is present in the restraint of Matthew +Arnold no less than in the exuberance of Swinburne, and affects our +writers who aim at simplicity no less than those who seek richness. +Indeed, nothing is so artificial as our simplicity. It is the simplicity +of the French stage _ingenue_. We are self-conscious to the finger-tips; +and this inherent quality, entailing on our poetry the inevitable loss of +spontaneity, ensures that whatever poets, of whatever excellence, may be +born to us from the Shelleian stock, its founder's spirit can take among +us no reincarnation. An age that is ceasing to produce child-like +children cannot produce a Shelley. For both as poet and man he was +essentially a child. + +Yet, just as in the effete French society before the Revolution the Queen +played at Arcadia, the King played at being a mechanic, everyone played +at simplicity and universal philanthropy, leaving for most durable +outcome of their philanthropy the guillotine, as the most durable outcome +of ours may be execution by electricity;--so in our own society the talk +of benevolence and the cult of childhood are the very fashion of the +hour. We, of this self-conscious, incredulous generation, sentimentalise +our children, analyse our children, think we are endowed with a special +capacity to sympathise and identify ourselves with children; we play at +being children. And the result is that we are not more child-like, but +our children are less child-like. It is so tiring to stoop to the child, +so much easier to lift the child up to you. Know you what it is to be a +child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It +is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to +believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to +be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to +turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, +and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in +its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king +of infinite space; it is + + To see a world in a grain of sand, + And a heaven in a wild flower, + Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, + And eternity in an hour; + +it is to know not as yet that you are under sentence of life, nor +petition that it be commuted into death. When we become conscious in +dreaming that we dream, the dream is on the point of breaking; when we +become conscious in living that we live, the ill dream is but just +beginning. Now if Shelley was but too conscious of the dream, in other +respects Dryden's false and famous line might have been applied to him +with very much less than it's usual untruth. {5} To the last, in a +degree uncommon even among poets, he retained the idiosyncrasy of +childhood, expanded and matured without differentiation. To the last he +was the enchanted child. + +This was, as is well known, patent in his life. It is as really, though +perhaps less obviously, manifest in his poetry, the sincere effluence of +his life. And it may not, therefore, be amiss to consider whether it was +conditioned by anything beyond his congenital nature. For our part, we +believe it to have been equally largely the outcome of his early and long +isolation. Men given to retirement and abstract study are notoriously +liable to contract a certain degree of childlikeness: and if this be the +case when we segregate a man, how much more when we segregate a child! It +is when they are taken into the solution of school-life that children, by +the reciprocal interchange of influence with their fellows, undergo the +series of reactions which converts them from children into boys and from +boys into men. The intermediate stage must be traversed to reach the +final one. + +Now Shelley never could have been a man, for he never was a boy. And the +reason lay in the persecution which overclouded his school-days. Of that +persecution's effect upon him, he has left us, in _The Revolt of Islam_, +a picture which to many or most people very probably seems a poetical +exaggeration; partly because Shelley appears to have escaped physical +brutality, partly because adults are inclined to smile tenderly at +childish sorrows which are not caused by physical suffering. That he +escaped for the most part bodily violence is nothing to the purpose. It +is the petty malignant annoyance recurring hour by hour, day by day, +month by month, until its accumulation becomes an agony; it is this which +is the most terrible weapon that boys have against their fellow boy, who +is powerless to shun it because, unlike the man, he has virtually no +privacy. His is the torture which the ancients used, when they anointed +their victim with honey and exposed him naked to the restless fever of +the flies. He is a little St. Sebastian, sinking under the incessant +flight of shafts which skilfully avoid the vital parts. + +We do not, therefore, suspect Shelley of exaggeration: he was, no doubt, +in terrible misery. Those who think otherwise must forget their own +past. Most people, we suppose, _must_ forget what they were like when +they were children: otherwise they would know that the griefs of their +childhood were passionate abandonment, _dechirants_ (to use a +characteristically favourite phrase of modern French literature) as the +griefs of their maturity. Children's griefs are little, certainly; but +so is the child, so is its endurance, so is its field of vision, while +its nervous impressionability is keener than ours. Grief is a matter of +relativity; the sorrow should be estimated by its proportion to the +sorrower; a gash is as painful to one as an amputation to another. Pour +a puddle into a thimble, or an Atlantic into Etna; both thimble and +mountain overflow. Adult fools, would not the angels smile at our +griefs, were not angels too wise to smile at them? + +So beset, the child fled into the tower of his own soul, and raised the +drawbridge. He threw out a reserve, encysted in which he grew to +maturity unaffected by the intercourses that modify the maturity of +others into the thing we call a man. The encysted child developed until +it reached years of virility, until those later Oxford days in which Hogg +encountered it; then, bursting at once from its cyst and the university, +it swam into a world not illegitimately perplexed by such a whim of the +gods. It was, of course, only the completeness and duration of this +seclusion--lasting from the gate of boyhood to the threshold of +youth--which was peculiar to Shelley. Most poets, probably, like most +saints, are prepared for their mission by an initial segregation, as the +seed is buried to germinate: before they can utter the oracle of poetry, +they must first be divided from the body of men. It is the severed head +that makes the seraph. + +Shelley's life frequently exhibits in him the magnified child. It is +seen in his fondness for apparently futile amusements, such as the +sailing of paper boats. This was, in the truest sense of the word, child- +like; not, as it is frequently called and considered, childish. That is +to say, it was not a mindless triviality, but the genuine child's power +of investing little things with imaginative interest; the same power, +though differently devoted, which produced much of his poetry. Very +possibly in the paper boat he saw the magic bark of Laon and Cythna, or + + That thinnest boat + In which the mother of the months is borne + By ebbing night into her western cave. + +In fact, if you mark how favourite an idea, under varying forms, is this +in his verse, you will perceive that all the charmed boats which glide +down the stream of his poetry are but glorified resurrections of the +little paper argosies which trembled down the Isis. + +And the child appeared no less often in Shelley the philosopher than in +Shelley the idler. It is seen in his repellent no less than in his +amiable weaknesses; in the unteachable folly of a love that made its goal +its starting-point, and firmly expected spiritual rest from each new +divinity, though it had found none from the divinities antecedent. For +we are clear that this was no mere straying of sensual appetite, but a +straying, strange and deplorable, of the spirit; that (contrary to what +Mr. Coventry Patmore has said) he left a woman not because he was tired +of her arms, but because he was tired of her soul. When he found Mary +Shelley wanting, he seems to have fallen into the mistake of Wordsworth, +who complained in a charming piece of unreasonableness that his wife's +love, which had been a fountain, was now only a well: + + Such change, and at the very door + Of my fond heart, hath made me poor. + +Wordsworth probably learned, what Shelley was incapable of learning, that +love can never permanently be a fountain. A living poet, in an article +{6} which you almost fear to breathe upon lest you should flutter some of +the frail pastel-like bloom, has said the thing: "Love itself has tidal +moments, lapses and flows due to the metrical rule of the interior +heart." Elementary reason should proclaim this true. Love is an +affection, its display an emotion: love is the air, its display is the +wind. An affection may be constant; an emotion can no more be constant +than the wind can constantly blow. All, therefore, that a man can +reasonably ask of his wife is that her love should be indeed a well. A +well; but a Bethesda-well, into which from time to time the angel of +tenderness descends to trouble the waters for the healing of the beloved. +Such a love Shelley's second wife appears unquestionably to have given +him. Nay, she was content that he should veer while she remained true; +she companioned him intellectually, shared his views, entered into his +aspirations, and yet--yet, even at the date of _Epipsychidion_ the +foolish child, her husband, assigned her the part of moon to Emilia +Viviani's sun, and lamented that he was barred from final, certain, +irreversible happiness by a cold and callous society. Yet few poets were +so mated before, and no poet was so mated afterwards, until Browning +stooped and picked up a fair-coined soul that lay rusting in a pool of +tears. + +In truth, his very unhappiness and discontent with life, in so far as it +was not the inevitable penalty of the ethical anarch, can only be +ascribed to this same child-like irrationality--though in such a form it +is irrationality hardly peculiar to Shelley. Pity, if you will, his +spiritual ruins and the neglected early training which was largely their +cause; but the pity due to his outward circumstances has been strangely +exaggerated. The obloquy from which he suffered he deliberately and +wantonly courted. For the rest, his lot was one that many a young poet +might envy. He had faithful friends, a faithful wife, an income small +but assured. Poverty never dictated to his pen; the designs on his +bright imagination were never etched by the sharp fumes of necessity. + +If, as has chanced to others--as chanced, for example, to Mangan--outcast +from home, health and hope, with a charred past and a bleared future, an +anchorite without detachment and self-cloistered without +self-sufficingness, deposed from a world which he had not abdicated, +pierced with thorns which formed no crown, a poet hopeless of the bays +and a martyr hopeless of the palm, a land cursed against the dews of +love, an exile banned and proscribed even from the innocent arms of +childhood--he were burning helpless at the stake of his unquenchable +heart, then he might have been inconsolable, then might he have cast the +gorge at life, then have cowered in the darkening chamber of his being, +tapestried with mouldering hopes, and hearkened to the winds that swept +across the illimitable wastes of death. But no such hapless lot was +Shelley's as that of his own contemporaries--Keats, half chewed in the +jaws of London and spit dying on to Italy; de Quincey, who, if he +escaped, escaped rent and maimed from those cruel jaws; Coleridge, whom +they dully mumbled for the major portion of his life. Shelley had +competence, poetry, love; yet he wailed that he could lie down like a +tired child and weep away his life of care. Is it ever so with you, sad +brother; is it ever so with me? and is there no drinking of pearls except +they be dissolved in biting tears? "Which of us has his desire, or +having it is satisfied?" + +It is true that he shared the fate of nearly all the great poets +contemporary with him, in being unappreciated. Like them, he suffered +from critics who were for ever shearing the wild tresses of poetry +between rusty rules, who could never see a literary bough project beyond +the trim level of its day but they must lop it with a crooked criticism, +who kept indomitably planting in the defile of fame the "established +canons" that had been spiked by poet after poet. But we decline to +believe that a singer of Shelley's calibre could be seriously grieved by +want of vogue. Not that we suppose him to have found consolation in that +senseless superstition, "the applause of posterity." Posterity! +posterity which goes to Rome, weeps large-sized tears, carves beautiful +inscriptions over the tomb of Keats; and the worm must wriggle her +curtsey to it all, since the dead boy, wherever he be, has quite other +gear to tend. Never a bone less dry for all the tears! + +A poet must to some extent be a chameleon and feed on air. But it need +not be the musty breath of the multitude. He can find his needful +support in the judgement of those whose judgement he knows valuable, and +such support Shelley had: + + La gloire + Ne compte pas toujours les voix; + Elle les pese quelquefois. + +Yet if this might be needful to him as support, neither this, nor the +applause of the present, nor the applause of posterity, could have been +needful to him as motive: the one all-sufficing motive for a great poet's +singing is that expressed by Keats: + + I was taught in Paradise + To ease my breast of melodies. + +Precisely so. The overcharged breast can find no ease but in suckling +the baby-song. No enmity of outward circumstances, therefore, but his +own nature, was responsible for Shelley's doom. + +A being with so much about it of child-like unreasonableness, and yet +withal so much of the beautiful attraction luminous in a child's sweet +unreasonableness, would seem fore-fated by its very essence to the +transience of the bubble and the rainbow, of all things filmy and fair. +Did some shadow of this destiny bear part in his sadness? Certain it is +that, by a curious chance, he himself in _Julian and Maddalo_ jestingly +foretold the manner of his end. "O ho! You talk as in years past," said +Maddalo (Byron) to Julian (Shelley); "If you can't swim, Beware of +Providence." Did no unearthly _dixisti_ sound in his ears as he wrote +it? But a brief while, and Shelley, who could not swim, was weltering on +the waters of Lerici. We know not how this may affect others, but over +us it is a coincidence which has long tyrannised with an absorbing +inveteracy of impression (strengthened rather than diminished by the +contrast between the levity of the utterance and its fatal +fulfilment)--thus to behold, heralding itself in warning mockery through +the very lips of its predestined victim, the Doom upon whose breath his +locks were lifting along the coasts of Campania. The death which he had +prophesied came upon him, and Spezzia enrolled another name among the +mournful Marcelli of our tongue; Venetian glasses which foamed and burst +before the poisoned wine of life had risen to their brims. + +* * * * * + +Coming to Shelley's poetry, we peep over the wild mask of revolutionary +metaphysics, and we see the winsome face of the child. Perhaps none of +his poems is more purely and typically Shelleian than _The Cloud_, and it +is interesting to note how essentially it springs from the faculty of +make-believe. The same thing is conspicuous, though less purely +conspicuous, throughout his singing; it is the child's faculty of make- +believe raised to the nth power. He is still at play, save only that his +play is such as manhood stops to watch, and his playthings are those +which the gods give their children. The universe is his box of toys. He +dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling +amidst the stars. He makes bright mischief with the moon. The meteors +nuzzle their noses in his hand. He teases into growling the kennelled +thunder, and laughs at the shaking of its fiery chain. He dances in and +out of the gates of heaven: its floor is littered with his broken +fancies. He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling +world. He gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in +the lap of patient Nature and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred +wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest in his song. + +This it was which, in spite of his essentially modern character as a +singer, qualified Shelley to be the poet of _Prometheus Unbound_, for it +made him, in the truest sense of the word, a mythological poet. This +child-like quality assimilated him to the child-like peoples among whom +mythologies have their rise. Those Nature myths which, according to +many, are the basis of all mythology, are likewise the very basis of +Shelley's poetry. The lark that is the gossip of heaven, the winds that +pluck the grey from the beards of the billows, the clouds that are +snorted from the sea's broad nostril, all the elemental spirits of +Nature, take from his verse perpetual incarnation and reincarnation, pass +in a thousand glorious transmigrations through the radiant forms of his +imagery. + +Thus, but not in the Wordsworthian sense, he is a veritable poet of +Nature. For with Nature the Wordsworthians will admit no tampering: they +exact the direct interpretative reproduction of her; that the poet should +follow her as a mistress, not use her as a handmaid. To such following +of Nature, Shelley felt no call. He saw in her not a picture set for his +copying, but a palette set for his brush; not a habitation prepared for +his inhabiting, but a Coliseum whence he might quarry stones for his own +palaces. Even in his descriptive passages the dream-character of his +scenery is notorious; it is not the clear, recognisable scenery of +Wordsworth, but a landscape that hovers athwart the heat and haze arising +from his crackling fantasies. The materials for such visionary Edens +have evidently been accumulated from direct experience, but they are +recomposed by him into such scenes as never had mortal eye beheld. "Don't +you wish you had?" as Turner said. The one justification for classing +Shelley with the Lake poet is that he loved Nature with a love even more +passionate, though perhaps less profound. Wordsworth's _Nightingale and +Stockdove_ sums up the contrast between the two, as though it had been +written for such a purpose. Shelley is the "creature of ebullient +heart," who + + Sings as if the god of wine + Had helped him to a valentine. + +Wordsworth's is the + + --Love with quiet blending, + Slow to begin and never ending, + +the "serious faith and inward glee." + +But if Shelley, instead of culling Nature, crossed with its pollen the +blossoms of his own soul, that Babylonian garden is his marvellous and +best apology. For astounding figurative opulence he yields only to +Shakespeare, and even to Shakespeare not in absolute fecundity but in +images. The sources of his figurative wealth are specialised, sources of +Shakespeare's are universal. It would have been as conscious an effort +for him to speak without figure as it is for most men to speak with +figure. Suspended in the dripping well of his imagination the commonest +object becomes encrusted with imagery. Herein again he deviates from the +true Nature poet, the normal Wordsworth type of Nature poet: imagery was +to him not a mere means of expression, not even a mere means of +adornment; it was a delight for its own sake. + +And herein we find the trail by which we would classify him. He belongs +to a school of which not impossibly he may hardly have read a line--the +Metaphysical School. To a large extent he _is_ what the Metaphysical +School should have been. That school was a certain kind of poetry trying +for a range. Shelley is the range found. Crashaw and Shelley sprang +from the same seed; but in the one case the seed was choked with thorns, +in the other case it fell on good ground. The Metaphysical School was in +its direct results an abortive movement, though indirectly much came of +it--for Dryden came of it. Dryden, to a greater extent than is (we +imagine) generally perceived, was Cowley systematised; and Cowley, who +sank into the arms of Dryden, rose from the lap of Donne. + +But the movement was so abortive that few will thank us for connecting +with it the name of Shelley. This is because to most people the +Metaphysical School means Donne, whereas it ought to mean Crashaw. We +judge the direction of a development by its highest form, though that +form may have been produced but once, and produced imperfectly. Now the +highest product of the Metaphysical School was Crashaw, and Crashaw was a +Shelley _manque_; he never reached the Promised Land, but he had fervid +visions of it. The Metaphysical School, like Shelley, loved imagery for +its own sake: and how beautiful a thing the frank toying with imagery may +be, let _The Skylark_ and _The Cloud_ witness. It is only evil when the +poet, on the straight way to a fixed object, lags continually from the +path to play. This is commendable neither in poet nor errand-boy. The +Metaphysical School failed, not because it toyed with imagery, but +because it toyed with it frostily. To sport with the tangles of Neaera's +hair may be trivial idleness or caressing tenderness, exactly as your +relation to Neaera is that of heartless gallantry or of love. So you may +toy with imagery in mere intellectual ingenuity, and then you might as +well go write acrostics: or you may toy with it in raptures, and then you +may write a _Sensitive Plant_. In fact, the Metaphysical poets when they +went astray cannot be said to have done anything so dainty as is implied +by _toying_ with imagery. They cut it into shapes with a pair of +scissors. From all such danger Shelley was saved by his passionate +spontaneity. No trappings are too splendid for the swift steeds of +sunrise. His sword-hilt may be rough with jewels, but it is the hilt of +an Excalibur. His thoughts scorch through all the folds of expression. +His cloth of gold bursts at the flexures, and shows the naked poetry. + +* * * * * + +It is this gift of not merely embodying but apprehending everything in +figure which co-operates towards creating his rarest characteristics, so +almost preternaturally developed in no other poet, namely, his well-known +power to condense the most hydrogenic abstraction. Science can now educe +threads of such exquisite tenuity that only the feet of the tiniest +infant-spiders can ascend them; but up the filmiest insubstantiality +Shelley runs with agile ease. To him, in truth, nothing is abstract. The +dustiest abstractions + + Start, and tremble under his feet, + And blossom in purple and red. + +The coldest moon of an idea rises haloed through his vaporous +imagination. The dimmest-sparked chip of a conception blazes and +scintillates in the subtile oxygen of his mind. The most wrinkled AEson +of an abstruseness leaps rosy out of his bubbling genius. In a more +intensified signification than it is probable that Shakespeare dreamed +of, Shelley gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Here +afresh he touches the Metaphysical School, whose very title was drawn +from this habitual pursuit of abstractions, and who failed in that +pursuit from the one cause omnipresent with them, because in all their +poetic smithy they had left never a place for a forge. They laid their +fancies chill on the anvil. Crashaw, indeed, partially anticipated +Shelley's success, and yet further did a later poet, so much further that +we find it difficult to understand why a generation that worships Shelley +should be reviving Gray, yet almost forget the name of Collins. The +generality of readers, when they know him at all, usually know him by his +_Ode on the Passions_. In this, despite its beauty, there is still a +_soupcon_ of formalism, a lingering trace of powder from the eighteenth +century periwig, dimming the bright locks of poetry. Only the literary +student reads that little masterpiece, the _Ode to Evening_, which +sometimes heralds the Shelleian strain, while other passages are the sole +things in the language comparable to the miniatures of _Il Penseroso_. +Crashaw, Collins, Shelley--three ricochets of the one pebble, three jets +from three bounds of the one Pegasus! Collins's Pity, "with eyes of dewy +light," is near of kin to Shelley's Sleep, "the filmy-eyed"; and the +"shadowy tribes of mind" are the lineal progenitors of "Thought's crowned +powers." This, however, is personification, wherein both Collins and +Shelley build on Spenser: the dizzying achievement to which the modern +poet carried personification accounts for but a moiety, if a large +moiety, of his vivifying power over abstractions. Take the passage +(already alluded to) in that glorious chorus telling how the Hours come + + From the temples high + Of man's ear and eye + Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy, + + * * * * * + + From those skiey towers + Where Thought's crowned powers + Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours! + Our feet now, every palm, + Are sandalled with calm, + And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm; + And beyond our eyes + The human love lies + Which makes all it gazes on Paradise. + +Any partial explanation will break in our hands before it reaches the +root of such a power. The root, we take it, is this. He had an +instinctive perception (immense in range and fertility, astonishing for +its delicate intuition) of the underlying analogies the secret +subterranean passages, between matter and soul; the chromatic scales, +whereat we dimly guess, by which the Almighty modulates through all the +keys of creation. Because, the more we consider it, the more likely does +it appear that Nature is but an imperfect actress, whose constant changes +of dress never change her manner and method, who is the same in all her +parts. + +To Shelley's ethereal vision the most rarified mental or spiritual music +traced its beautiful corresponding forms on the sand of outward things. +He stood thus at the very junction-lines of the visible and invisible, +and could shift the points as he willed. His thoughts became a mounted +infantry, passing with baffling swiftness from horse to foot or foot to +horse. He could express as he listed the material and the immaterial in +terms of each other. Never has a poet in the past rivalled him as +regards this gift, and hardly will any poet rival him as regards it in +the future: men are like first to see the promised doom lay its hand on +the tree of heaven and shake down the golden leaves. {7} + +The finest specimens of this faculty are probably to be sought in that +Shelleian treasury, _Prometheus Unbound_. It is unquestionably the +greatest and most prodigal exhibition of Shelley's powers, this amazing +lyric world, where immortal clarities sigh past in the perfumes of the +blossoms, populate the breathings of the breeze, throng and twinkle in +the leaves that twirl upon the bough; where the very grass is all +a-rustle with lovely spirit-things, and a weeping mist of music fills the +air. The final scenes especially are such a Bacchic reel and rout and +revelry of beauty as leaves one staggered and giddy; poetry is spilt like +wine, music runs to drunken waste. The choruses sweep down the wind, +tirelessly, flight after flight, till the breathless soul almost cries +for respite from the unrolling splendours. Yet these scenes, so +wonderful from a purely poetical standpoint that no one could wish them +away, are (to our humble thinking) nevertheless the artistic error of the +poem. Abstractedly, the development of Shelley's idea required that he +should show the earthly paradise which was to follow the fall of Zeus. +But dramatically with that fall the action ceases, and the drama should +have ceased with it. A final chorus, or choral series, of rejoicings +(such as does ultimately end the drama where Prometheus appears on the +scene) would have been legitimate enough. Instead, however, the +bewildered reader finds the drama unfolding itself through scene after +scene which leaves the action precisely where it found it, because there +is no longer an action to advance. It is as if the choral _finale_ of an +opera were prolonged through two acts. + +We have, nevertheless, called _Prometheus_ Shelley's greatest poem +because it is the most comprehensive storehouse of his power. Were we +asked to name the most _perfect_ among his longer efforts, we should name +the poem in which he lamented Keats: under the shed petals of his lovely +fancy giving the slain bird a silken burial. Seldom is the death of a +poet mourned in true poetry. Not often is the singer coffined in laurel- +wood. Among the very few exceptions to such a rule, the greatest is +_Adonais_. In the English language only _Lycidas_ competes with it; and +when we prefer _Adonais_ to _Lycidas_, we are following the precedent set +in the case of Cicero: _Adonais_ is the longer. As regards command over +abstraction, it is no less characteristically Shelleian than +_Prometheus_. It is throughout a series of abstractions vitalised with +daring exquisiteness, from Morning who sought: + + Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, + Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, + +and who + + Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day, + +to the Dreams that were the flock of the dead shepherd, the Dreams + + Whom near the living streams + Of his young spirit he fed; and whom he taught + The love that was its music; + +of whom one sees, as she hangs mourning over him, + + Upon the silken fringe of his faint eyes, + Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies + A tear some dream has loosened from his brain! + Lost angel of a ruined Paradise! + She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain + She faded like a cloud which hath outwept its rain. + +In the solar spectrum, beyond the extreme red and extreme violet rays, +are whole series of colours, demonstrable, but imperceptible to gross +human vision. Such writing as this we have quoted renders visible the +invisibilities of imaginative colour. + +One thing prevents _Adonais_ from being ideally perfect: its lack of +Christian hope. Yet we remember well the writer of a popular memoir on +Keats proposing as "the best consolation for the mind pained by this sad +record" Shelley's inexpressibly sad exposition of Pantheistic +immortality: + + He is a portion of the loveliness + Which once he made more lovely, _etc_. + +What desolation can it be that discerns comfort in this hope, whose wan +countenance is as the countenance of a despair? What deepest depth of +agony is it that finds consolation in this immortality: an immortality +which thrusts you into death, the maw of Nature, that your dissolved +elements may circulate through her veins? + +Yet such, the poet tells me, is my sole balm for the hurts of life. I am +as the vocal breath floating from an organ. I too shall fade on the +winds, a cadence soon forgotten. So I dissolve and die, and am lost in +the ears of men: the particles of my being twine in newer melodies, and +from my one death arise a hundred lives. Why, through the thin partition +of this consolation Pantheism can hear the groans of its neighbour, +Pessimism. Better almost the black resignation which the fatalist draws +from his own hopelessness, from the fierce kisses of misery that hiss +against his tears. + +With some gleams, it is true, of more than mock solace, _Adonais_ is +lighted; but they are obtained by implicitly assuming the personal +immortality which the poem explicitly denies; as when, for instance, to +greet the dead youth, + + The inheritors of unfulfilled renown + Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought + Far in the unapparent. + +And again the final stanza of the poem: + + The breath whose might I have invoked in song + Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven + Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng + Whose sails were never to the tempest riven; + The massy earth, the sphered skies are given: + I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; + Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, + The soul of Adonais like a star + Beacons from the abode where the eternal are. + +The Soul of Adonais?--Adonais, who is but + + A portion of the loveliness + Which once he made more lovely. + +After all, to finish where we began, perhaps the poems on which the lover +of Shelley leans most lovingly, which he has oftenest in his mind, which +best represent Shelley to him and which he instinctively reverts to when +Shelley's name is mentioned are some of the shorter poems and detached +lyrics. Here Shelley forgets for a while all that ever makes his verse +turbid; forgets that he is anything but a poet, forgets sometimes that he +is anything but a child; lies back in his skiff, and looks at the clouds. +He plays truant from earth, slips through the wicket of fancy into +heaven's meadow, and goes gathering stars. Here we have that absolute +virgin-gold of song which is the scarcest among human products, and for +which we can go to but three poets--Coleridge, Shelley, Chopin, {8} and +perhaps we should add Keats. _Christabel_ and _Kubla-Khan_; _The +Skylark_, _The Cloud_, and _The Sensitive Plant_ (in its first two +parts). _The Eve of Saint Agnes_ and _The Nightingale_; certain of the +Nocturnes;--these things make very quintessentialised loveliness. It is +attar of poetry. + +Remark, as a thing worth remarking, that, although Shelley's diction is +at other times singularly rich, it ceases in these poems to be rich, or +to obtrude itself at all; it is imperceptible; his Muse has become a +veritable Echo, whose body has dissolved from about her voice. Indeed, +when his diction is richest, nevertheless the poetry so dominates the +expression that we feel the latter only as an atmosphere until we are +satiated with the former; then we discover with surprise to how imperial +a vesture we had been blinded by gazing on the face of his song. A +lesson, this, deserving to be conned by a generation so opposite in +tendency as our own: a lesson that in poetry, as in the Kingdom of God, +we should not take thought too greatly wherewith we shall be clothed, but +seek first {9} the spirit, and all these things will be added unto us. + +On the marvellous music of Shelley's verse we need not dwell, except to +note that he avoids that metronomic beat of rhythm which Edgar Poe +introduced into modern lyric measures, as Pope introduced it into the +rhyming heroics of his day. Our varied metres are becoming as painfully +over-polished as Pope's one metre. Shelley could at need sacrifice +smoothness to fitness. He could write an anapaest that would send Mr. +Swinburne into strong shudders (e.g., "stream did glide") when he +instinctively felt that by so forgoing the more obvious music of melody +he would better secure the higher music of harmony. If we have to add +that in other ways he was far from escaping the defects of his merits, +and would sometimes have to acknowledge that his Nilotic flood too often +overflowed its banks, what is this but saying that he died young? + +* * * * * + +It may be thought that in our casual comments on Shelley's life we have +been blind to its evil side. That, however, is not the case. We see +clearly that he committed grave sins, and one cruel crime; but we +remember also that he was an Atheist from his boyhood; we reflect how +gross must have been the moral neglect in the training of a child who +_could_ be an Atheist from his boyhood: and we decline to judge so +unhappy a being by the rules which we should apply to a Catholic. It +seems to us that Shelley was struggling--blindly, weakly, stumblingly, +but still struggling--towards higher things. His Pantheism is an +indication of it. Pantheism is a half-way house, and marks ascent or +descent according to the direction from which it is approached. Now +Shelley came to it from absolute Atheism; therefore in his case it meant +rise. Again, his poetry alone would lead us to the same conclusion, for +we do not believe that a truly corrupted spirit can write consistently +ethereal poetry. We should believe in nothing, if we believed that, for +it would be the consecration of a lie. Poetry is a thermometer: by +taking its average height you can estimate the normal temperature of its +writer's mind. The devil can do many things. But the devil cannot write +poetry. He may mar a poet, but he cannot make a poet. Among all the +temptations wherewith he tempted St. Anthony, though we have often seen +it stated that he howled, we have never seen it stated that he sang. + +Shelley's anarchic principles were as a rule held by him with some +misdirected view to truth. He disbelieved in kings. And is it not a +mere fact--regret it if you will--that in all European countries, except +two, monarchs are a mere survival, the obsolete buttons on the coat-tails +of rule, which serve no purpose but to be continually coming off? It is +a miserable thing to note how every little Balkan State, having obtained +liberty (save the mark!) by Act of Congress, straightway proceeds to +secure the service of a professional king. These gentlemen are plentiful +in Europe. They are the "noble Chairmen" who lend their names for a +consideration to any enterprising company which may be speculating in +Liberty. When we see these things, we revert to the old lines in which +Persius tells how you cannot turn Dama into a freeman by twirling him +round your finger and calling him Marcus Dama. + +Again, Shelley desired a religion of humanity, and that meant, to him, a +religion for humanity, a religion which, unlike the spectral Christianity +about him, should permeate and regulate the whole organisation of men. +And the feeling is one with which a Catholic must sympathise, in an age +when--if we may say so without irreverence--the Almighty has been made a +constitutional Deity, with certain state-grants of worship, but no +influence over political affairs. In these matters his aims were +generous, if his methods were perniciously mistaken. In his theory of +Free Love alone, borrowed like the rest from the Revolution, his aim was +as mischievous as his method. At the same time he was at least logical. +His theory was repulsive, but comprehensible. Whereas from our present +_via media_--facilitation of divorce--can only result the era when the +young lady in reduced circumstances will no longer turn governess but +will be open to engagement as wife at a reasonable stipend. + +We spoke of the purity of Shelley's poetry. We know of but three +passages to which exception can be taken. One is happily hidden under a +heap of Shelleian rubbish. Another is offensive, because it presents his +theory of Free Love in its most odious form. The third is very much a +matter, we think, for the individual conscience. Compare with this the +genuinely corrupt Byron, through the cracks and fissures of whose heaving +versification steam up perpetually the sulphurous vapours from his +central iniquity. We cannot credit that any Christian ever had his faith +shaken through reading Shelley, unless his faith were shaken before he +read Shelley. Is any safely havened bark likely to slip its cable, and +make for a flag planted on the very reef where the planter himself was +wrecked? + +* * * * * + +Why indeed (one is tempted to ask in concluding) should it be that the +poets who have written for us the poetry richest in skiey grain, most +free from admixture with the duller things of earth--the Shelleys, the +Coleridges, the Keats--are the very poets whose lives are among the +saddest records in literature? Is it that (by some subtile mystery of +analogy) sorrow, passion, and fantasy are indissolubly connected, like +water, fire, and cloud; that as from sun and dew are born the vapours, so +from fire and tears ascend the "visions of aerial joy"; that the harvest +waves richest over the battlefields of the soul; that the heart, like the +earth, smells sweetest after rain; that the spell on which depend such +necromantic castles is some spirit of pain charm-poisoned at their base? +{10} Such a poet, it may be, mists with sighs the window of his life +until the tears run down it; then some air of searching poetry, like an +air of searching frost, turns it to a crystal wonder. The god of golden +song is the god, too, of the golden sun; so peradventure song-light is +like sunlight, and darkens the countenance of the soul. Perhaps the rays +are to the stars what thorns are to the flowers; and so the poet, after +wandering over heaven, returns with bleeding feet. Less tragic in its +merely temporal aspect than the life of Keats or Coleridge, the life of +Shelley in its moral aspect is, perhaps, more tragical than that of +either; his dying seems a myth, a figure of his living; the material +shipwreck a figure of the immaterial. + +Enchanted child, born into a world unchildlike; spoiled darling of +Nature, playmate of her elemental daughters; "pard-like spirit, beautiful +and swift," laired amidst the burning fastnesses of his own fervid mind; +bold foot along the verges of precipitous dream; light leaper from crag +to crag of inaccessible fancies; towering Genius, whose soul rose like a +ladder between heaven and earth with the angels of song ascending and +descending it;--he is shrunken into the little vessel of death, and +sealed with the unshatterable seal of doom, and cast down deep below the +rolling tides of Time. Mighty meat for little guests, when the heart of +Shelley was laid in the cemetery of Caius Cestius! Beauty, music, +sweetness, tears--the mouth of the worm has fed of them all. Into that +sacred bridal-gloom of death where he holds his nuptials with eternity +let not our rash speculations follow him. Let us hope rather that as, +amidst material nature, where our dull eyes see only ruin, the finer eye +of science has discovered life in putridity and vigour in decay,--seeing +dissolution even and disintegration, which in the mouth of man symbolise +disorder, to be in the works of God undeviating order, and the manner of +our corruption to be no less wonderful than the manner of our health,--so, +amidst the supernatural universe, some tender undreamed surprise of life +in doom awaited that wild nature, which, worn by warfare with itself, its +Maker, and all the world, now + + Sleeps, and never palates more the dug, + The beggar's nurse, and Caesar's. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{1} That is to say, taken as the general animating spirit of the Fine +Arts. + +{2} The Abbe Bareille was not, of course, responsible for Savonarola's +taste, only for thus endorsing it. + +{3} We mean, of course, the hymn, "I rise from dreams of time." + +{4} We are a little surprised at the fact, because so many Victorian +poets are, or have been, prose-writers as well. Now, according to our +theory, the practice of prose should maintain fresh and comprehensive a +poet's diction, should save him from falling into the hands of an +exclusive coterie of poetic words. It should react upon his metrical +vocabulary to its beneficial expansion, by taking him outside his +aristocratic circle of language, and keeping him in touch with the great +commonalty, the proletariat of speech. For it is with words as with men: +constant intermarriage within the limits of a patrician clan begets +effete refinement; and to reinvigorate the stock, its veins must be +replenished from hardy plebeian blood. + +{5} Wordsworth's adaptation of it, however, is true. Men are not +"children of a larger growth," but the child _is_ father of the man, +since the parent is only partially reproduced in his offspring. + +{6} _The Rhythm of Life_, by Alice Meynell. + +{7} "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree +casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind" (Rev. vi, +13). + +{8} Such analogies between master in sister-arts are often interesting. +In some respects, is not Brahms the Browning of music? + +{9} Seek _first_, not seek _only_. + +{10} We hope that we need not refer the reader, for the methods of magic +architecture, to Ariosto and that Atlas among enchanters, Beckford. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY*** + + +******* This file should be named 1336.txt or 1336.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/3/1336 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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