‘How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou beThe shadow of some spirit lovelier still,Though evil stain its work, and it should beLike its creation, weak yet beautiful,I could fall down and worship that and thee.’‘My soul is an enchanted boat,Which, like a sleeping swan, doth floatUpon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;And thine doth like an angel sitBeside the helm conducting it,Whilst all the winds with melody are ringingIt seems to float ever, forever.Upon that many-winding river,Between mountains, woods, abysses,A paradise of wildernesses!Till, like one in slumber bound,Borne to the ocean, I float down, aroundInto a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.’
‘How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou beThe shadow of some spirit lovelier still,Though evil stain its work, and it should beLike its creation, weak yet beautiful,I could fall down and worship that and thee.’‘My soul is an enchanted boat,Which, like a sleeping swan, doth floatUpon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;And thine doth like an angel sitBeside the helm conducting it,Whilst all the winds with melody are ringingIt seems to float ever, forever.Upon that many-winding river,Between mountains, woods, abysses,A paradise of wildernesses!Till, like one in slumber bound,Borne to the ocean, I float down, aroundInto a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.’
‘How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou beThe shadow of some spirit lovelier still,Though evil stain its work, and it should beLike its creation, weak yet beautiful,I could fall down and worship that and thee.’
‘How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and thee.’
‘My soul is an enchanted boat,Which, like a sleeping swan, doth floatUpon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;And thine doth like an angel sitBeside the helm conducting it,Whilst all the winds with melody are ringingIt seems to float ever, forever.Upon that many-winding river,Between mountains, woods, abysses,A paradise of wildernesses!Till, like one in slumber bound,Borne to the ocean, I float down, aroundInto a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.’
‘My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside the helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing
It seems to float ever, forever.
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.’
This intimate sympathy with Nature, this perception of beauty in things seen and unseen, this deep joy in the sense of existence, make the very life of Shelley’s life; he is the ideal poet, feeding
‘on the aerial kissesOf shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.’
‘on the aerial kissesOf shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.’
‘on the aerial kissesOf shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.’
‘on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.’
Taine has said, with truth, of modern life,—
‘Nous ne savons plus prendre la vie en grand, sortir de nous mêmes; nous nous contennons dans un petit bien-être personnel, dans une petite œuvre viagère.’[He is writing in the mountains beyond Naples.]‘Ici on reduit le vieux et le couvert au simple necessaire. Ainsi dégagée l’âme, comme les yeux, pouvait contempler les vastes horizons tout ce qui s’etend et dure au déla de l’homme.’
‘Nous ne savons plus prendre la vie en grand, sortir de nous mêmes; nous nous contennons dans un petit bien-être personnel, dans une petite œuvre viagère.’[He is writing in the mountains beyond Naples.]‘Ici on reduit le vieux et le couvert au simple necessaire. Ainsi dégagée l’âme, comme les yeux, pouvait contempler les vastes horizons tout ce qui s’etend et dure au déla de l’homme.’
Modern life gives you six electric bells beside your bed, but not one court or chamber that a great artist would care to copy. The poet yawning among the electric bells becomes a common-place person, with a mind obscured by a gourmet’s love of the table and the cellar; he is the chameleon who has lost his luminous and magical powers of transfiguration, and become a mere gorged lizard stuffed with sugar.
Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, were in their different lives so great because they had all the power to reject the drowsy and dulling influences of the common world of men, and withdraw from it to Ravenna, to Lirici, to Rydal. The commonplace of life, whether in occupations, relationships, or so-called duties, eats away the poetry of temperament with the slow, sure gnawing of the hidden insect which eats away thetiger-skin until where the golden bronze and deep sable of the shining fur once glistened, there is only a bald, bare spot, with neither colour nor beauty left in it. There are millions on millions of ordinary human lives to follow the common tracks and fulfil the common functions of human life. When the poet is dragged down to any of these he is lost. The moth who descried the star lies dead in the kitchen fire, degraded and injured beyond recall.
‘There is a path on the sea’s azure floor;No keel has ever ploughed that path before.’
‘There is a path on the sea’s azure floor;No keel has ever ploughed that path before.’
‘There is a path on the sea’s azure floor;No keel has ever ploughed that path before.’
‘There is a path on the sea’s azure floor;
No keel has ever ploughed that path before.’
Such should be the poet’s passage through life. Not his is it to sail by chart and compass with common mariners along the sea roads marked out for safety and for commerce.
Above all else, the poet should be true to himself—to his own vision, his own powers, his own soul,
‘like Heaven’s pure breathWhich he who grasps can hold not; like death,Who rides upon a thought, and makes his wayThrough temple, tower and palace, and the arrayOf arms.’
‘like Heaven’s pure breathWhich he who grasps can hold not; like death,Who rides upon a thought, and makes his wayThrough temple, tower and palace, and the arrayOf arms.’
‘like Heaven’s pure breathWhich he who grasps can hold not; like death,Who rides upon a thought, and makes his wayThrough temple, tower and palace, and the arrayOf arms.’
‘like Heaven’s pure breath
Which he who grasps can hold not; like death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
Through temple, tower and palace, and the array
Of arms.’
The supreme glory of Shelley is that he, beyond all others, did go where ‘no keel ever ploughed before,’ did dwell more completely than any other has ever dwelt
‘on an imagined shoreWhere the gods spoke with him.’
‘on an imagined shoreWhere the gods spoke with him.’
‘on an imagined shoreWhere the gods spoke with him.’
‘on an imagined shore
Where the gods spoke with him.’
The poet is wisest, and his creations are most beautiful when his thoughts roam alone in
‘fields of Heaven-reflecting sea,. . . . . . . . . .Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of cornSwayed by the summer air;’
‘fields of Heaven-reflecting sea,. . . . . . . . . .Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of cornSwayed by the summer air;’
‘fields of Heaven-reflecting sea,. . . . . . . . . .Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of cornSwayed by the summer air;’
‘fields of Heaven-reflecting sea,
. . . . . . . . . .
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn
Swayed by the summer air;’
and when he, like Proteus, marks
‘The shadow of fair ships, as mortals seeThe floating bark of the light-laden moonWith that white star, it’s sightless pilot’s crest,Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea;Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,And desolation, and the mingled voiceOf slavery and command; but by the lightOf wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,And music soft and mild, free, gentle voices,That sweetest music, such as spirits love.’
‘The shadow of fair ships, as mortals seeThe floating bark of the light-laden moonWith that white star, it’s sightless pilot’s crest,Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea;Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,And desolation, and the mingled voiceOf slavery and command; but by the lightOf wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,And music soft and mild, free, gentle voices,That sweetest music, such as spirits love.’
‘The shadow of fair ships, as mortals seeThe floating bark of the light-laden moonWith that white star, it’s sightless pilot’s crest,Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea;Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,And desolation, and the mingled voiceOf slavery and command; but by the lightOf wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,And music soft and mild, free, gentle voices,That sweetest music, such as spirits love.’
‘The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see
The floating bark of the light-laden moon
With that white star, it’s sightless pilot’s crest,
Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea;
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
And desolation, and the mingled voice
Of slavery and command; but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,
And music soft and mild, free, gentle voices,
That sweetest music, such as spirits love.’
And he is wisest when he says, with Apollo,
‘I shall gaze not on the deeds which makeMy mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipseDarkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hearThe small, clear, silver lute of the young SpiritThat sits i’ the morning star.’
‘I shall gaze not on the deeds which makeMy mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipseDarkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hearThe small, clear, silver lute of the young SpiritThat sits i’ the morning star.’
‘I shall gaze not on the deeds which makeMy mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipseDarkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hearThe small, clear, silver lute of the young SpiritThat sits i’ the morning star.’
‘I shall gaze not on the deeds which make
My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse
Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i’ the morning star.’
If ever poet held that lute on earth, Shelley held it all through his brief life; and if ever there be immortality for any soul, his surely is living now beside that Spirit in the light of a ceaseless day.
‘Death is the veil which those who live call life;They sleep, and it is lifted.’
‘Death is the veil which those who live call life;They sleep, and it is lifted.’
‘Death is the veil which those who live call life;They sleep, and it is lifted.’
‘Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.’