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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +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 deje 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 childlike 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 childlike 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 childlike quality assimilated him to the childlike 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 [thought +Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal +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 Etext of Shelley, by Francis Thompson** + diff --git a/old/tshly10.zip b/old/tshly10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1922c2d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tshly10.zip |