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, 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 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.
