of the works of Man with the desert, the forest, and the ocean (Canto IV, ll. 1587-1656).

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON

Pp. 451 ff. Bonnivard, celebrated in the prefatory sonnet, was a Genevan patriot, imprisoned for six years in the castle of Chillon, four of which he spent in the dungeon. He was released by his own party and seems to have lived for some thirtyfour years more. His story, though not very similar to that of "the prisoner," no doubt suggested the poem.

ODE

Pp. 455 ff. There can be no doubt of the genuineness of Byron's interest in political independence. It is attested not only by the sonnet on Chillon, this Ode, and many other passages in his writings, but by his devotion of his money and his life to the struggle for the independence of Greece. At the time this Ode was written, Venice, once a glorious and powerful republic, had been since 1797 a possession of Austria. Austrian governors sat in the ancient seat of the doges, and Austrian soldiers paraded with drums and guns in the streets and in the Piazza di San Marco; the ancient spirit of patriotism seemed dead or at least alive only in the hearts of a few conspirators, who held meetings in Byron's own apartments. Every reader will wish to read in connection with this Ode, Ruskin's The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. IV (cf. above, pp. 582 ff.), especially §§ xii-xv.

This Ode is very uneven in conception and execution. Cantos I and IV are well conceived and in general nobly expressed; Cantos II and III are awkward and uncertain in thought and awkward and involved in style.

After four lines of invocation to the city, Canto I is devoted to a merciless arraignment of the Venetians for cowardice and submission to the tyrant Austria. Even the carved Lion of St. Mark, the patron saint of the city, is made to appear subdued and spiritless (1. 19) and the city is compared to a dying man (ll. 37–55).

In Canto II (ll. 56-100) the same theme is continued in confused fashion, with almost unintelligible references to "the few spirits" who love freedom and are not appalled at thought of the crimes which the mob will commit in freedom's name when the prison wall is thundered down.

P. 456. Canto III recites some of the former glories of Venice and her services in preserving

freedom for Europe, and, finally, the poor requital she has received.

Canto IV predicts the disappearance of freedom from Europe with the subjugation of Switzerland and declares America to be its only remaining refuge.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Pp. 458 ff. Shelley's poetry should be read in the light of his own views of the nature and value of poetry. These are given with clearness and eloquence in his Defense of Poetry, which, with the views of sixteen other poets, including Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, is published in a small volume entitled The Prelude to Poetry, edited by Ernest Rhys (J. M. Dent and Co.). What the poets themselves thought about the nature and value of their own art is surely of greater interest to lovers of it than the disquisitions of critical system makers.

ALASTOR

Alastor is not the name of the hero or any other character in the poem indeed there are no other characters. It is a Greek word meaning an evil spirit; Shelley's intention was to set forth solitude as evil and even fatal. "The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin.” But Shelley's sympathy is so obviously engaged by his picture of the youth enamored of "his own imaginations" of "all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful" and uniting them in" a single image," that the terror of the poet's fate is less impressive than the charm of his lonely and restless pursuit of loveliness and truth. The passage here given contains only the characterization of the youth and a general account of his early efforts in search of truth. The quotation from St. Augustine is from the Confessions, Bk. III, Chap. I.

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY

Pp. 459 f. The basis of this poem is Plato's doctrine of beauty; cf. especially The Banquet. It gains new light and interest from a comparison with Spenser's Hymn in Honor of Beauty and Hymn of Heavenly Beauty (see pp. 120-122), which are based upon Neo-Platonism; that is, upon the ideas of Plato as modified by later Christian and nonChristian philosophers and poets.

The following quotation from Diotima's conversation, as given by Socrates in Plato's Banquet,

gives the principal features of Plato's doctrine of beauty; the translation is Shelley's:

"He who aspires to love rightly, ought from his earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms, and first to make a single form the object of his love, and therein to generate intellectual excellences. He ought, then, to consider that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of that beauty which subsists in another form; and if he ought to pursue that which is beautiful in form, it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much of his ardent preference towards one, through his perception of the multitude of claims upon his love. In addition, he would consider the beauty which is in souls more excellent than that which is in form. So that one endowed with an admirable soul, even though the flower of the form were withered, would suffice him as the object of his love and care, and the companion with whom he might seek and produce such conclusions as tend to the improvement of youth; so that it might be led to observe the beauty and the conformity which there is in the observation of its duties and the laws, and to esteem little the mere beauty of the outward form. He would then conduct his pupil to science, so that he might look upon the loveliness of wisdom; and that contemplating thus the universal beauty, no longer would he unworthily and meanly enslave himself to the attractions of one form in love, nor one subject of discipline or science, but would turn towards the wide ocean of intellectual beauty, and from the sight of the lovely and majestic forms which it contains, would abundantly bring forth his conceptions in philosophy; until, strengthened and confirmed, he should at length steadily contemplate one science, which is the science of this universal beauty.

"Attempt, I entreat you, to mark what I say with as keen an observation as you can. He who has been disciplined to this point in Love, by contemplating beautiful objects gradually, and in their order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns Love, on a sudden beholds a beauty wonderful in its nature. This is it, O Socrates, for the sake of which all the former labours were endured. It is eternal, unproduced, indestructible; neither subject to increase nor decay: not, like other things, partly beautiful and partly deformed; not beautiful in the estimation of one person and deformed in that of another; nor can this supreme beauty be figured to the imagination like a beautiful face, or beautiful hands, or any portion of the body, nor like any discourse nor any

science. Nor does it subsist in any other that lives or is, either in earth, or in heaven, or in any other place; but it is eternally uniform and consistent, and monoeidic with itself. All other things are beautiful through a participation of it, with this condition, that although they are subject to production and decay, it never becomes more or less, or endures any change. When any one, ascending from a correct system of Love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches the consummation of his labour. For such as disciplined themselves upon this system, or are conducted by another beginning to ascend through these transitory objects which are beautiful, towards that which is beauty itself, proceeding as on steps from the love of one form to that of two, and from that of two to that of all forms which are beautiful; and from beautiful forms to beautiful habits and institutions, and from institutions to beautiful doctrines; until, from the meditation of many doctrines, they arrive at that which is nothing else than the doctrine of the supreme beauty itself, in the knowledge and contemplation of which at length they repose."

OZYMANDIAS

P. 460. This sonnet was written by Shelley in friendly competition with Leigh Hunt, who took the river Nile as his subject and, on this one occasion, proved himself Shelley's equal. The theme is taken from a passage in Diodorus Siculus, who describes the gigantic statue and records the inscription. Here, as elsewhere, Shelley is careless of rhyme and other details of form.

LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS

The Euganean Hills are near Este in Italy, south of a line drawn from Padua to Verona. The view from Shelley's garden was a wide one east and south and west. The mood of the poem is due to Shelley's ill health and the recent death of his infant daughter.

P. 461. ll. 212 ff. Cf. Byron's Ode and Wordsworth's sonnet On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic. The brutal Celt (1. 223) is inaccurately applied to the Austrians.

1. 239. Ezzelin. Ezzelino da Romano (11941259), successively conqueror of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Feltre, Trento and Brescia, aspired to the conquest of Milan and all Lombardy. His cruelty was such that his name became proverbial and the

legend arose that his mother confessed that he was the son of Satan himself. He is placed by Dante, in the Inferno, among the tyrants expiating the sin of cruelty, and his career was the subject of the first modern tragedy, the Eccerinus of Albertino Mussato. The dice play by Sin and Death two Miltonic figures was, according to the poet, to decide whether he should continue his life of sin or die.

11. 256 ff. Padua was the seat of one of the most famous universities of medieval and early modern times.

P. 462. 1. 292. point of heaven's profound, zenith of the fathomless depths of air.

1. 333. Its, the frail bark's (1. 331).

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

The poet, despondent and empty of energy, appeals for aid to the West Wind of Autumn. Stanzas I, II, and III are successive apostrophes to the Wind in various functions and aspects. In stanzas IV and V he makes his appeal for aid, and as his inspiration glows and his pulses quicken, he passes from appeals that he may be passively subject to the Wind's power a leaf lifted and driven before it, or a lyre responding in mighty harmonies to its breath- to a prayer for active union in spirit and power to scatter his thoughts among men, and finally reaches a triumphant recognition that the coming of Winter is the promise of Spring.

The poem is very subtly and skilfully constructed. Not only do the last two stanzas recall all the activities of the first three, but ll. 64, 65 are beautifully associated with ll. 2-14, and the triumphant note of ll. 68-70 is prepared for by the words,

"Thou dirge

Of the dying year" (II. 23, 24).

The stanzas are ingeniously formed from the terza rima, the verse of Dante's Divina Commedia. Strictly speaking, the terza rima1ends with the thirteenth line of each stanza; Shelley, in order to get a stanzaic effect, adds another line rhyming with the thirteenth. The terza rima gives him the continuity of movement within the stanza

1 In terza rima the first rhyme and the last must appear twice and only twice, while each of the others must appear three times. The rhyme formula is ababcbcdc xwxYxyzyz. Terza rima is rare in English. Other examples of it in this volume are Wyatt's Of the Meane and Sure Estate (p. 98) and Rossetti's fragment, Francesca da Rimini (p. 629), translated from Dante.

appropriate to his subject; the couplet rhyme gives the stanzaic structure necessary to his plan. 1. 9. Thine azure sister of the spring is not the South Wind, as has sometimes been supposed, for from ancient times the south wind has been dreaded in Italy (see Vergil's Eclogues and Georgics, passim). The wind meant is the West Wind of the Spring, sister to the West Wind of Autumn.

P. 463. 1. 21. Manad. The women who in ecstasy took part in the rites of Dionysus, with flying hair and flaming torches, were called Mænads (the frenzied ones). Everybody who has not already done so should read Professor Gilbert Murray's translation of the Bacche of Euripides.

1. 32. A pumice isle is one formed from the lava of a volcano. Baie, an ancient Roman pleasure resort, is the modern Baja, a few miles west of Naples, in a region where nearly extinct volcanoes still rumble and spurt feebly.

THE INDIAN SERENADE

There are several versions of this poem, all apparently originating with Shelley himself. This explains the variant readings, of which there are several, for example: burning for shining (l. 4); As I must die on thine (l. 15); Beloved as thou art (1. 16); press me to thine own and press it close to thine again (1. 23).

THE CLOUD

P. 464. ll. 17-30. Shelley conceives of the Lightning as the pilot of the Cloud and as itself following the movements of the genii that move in the sea. Wherever the Lightning dreams, the spirit he loves will be found below under mountain or stream. But how does the Lightning dissolve in rain (1. 30)? One would expect the Cloud to do that.

TO A SKYLARK

Pp. 465 f. This flood of divine rapture is one of the many wonderful poems in English which have so impressed lovers of the beautiful, that even we Americans, to whom the cuckoo, the English skylark, and the nightingale are entirely unknown, think of these birds as sources of delight, and some of us who "meddle with making," as the old scribbler said, have even written about them without ever having heard a song from their throats. Nearly all the poem is devoted to the bird itself the first six stanzas to pure lyric outcries, the second six to lyric comparisons with

other forms of beauty, then six to a contrast of the bird's song of unalloyed happiness with human music with its constant undertone of incompleteness and longing; in the last three stanzas, reverting to the appeal of 11. 61-62, the poet longs for the skill of the bird.

ADONAIS

Pp. 466 ff. There has been much discussion as to the formation of this name, but no entirely satisfactory suggestion has yet been made. The suggestion that it is formed on the model of Thebais, a poem by Statius about Thebes, is obviously unacceptable, as Adonais is primarily the name, not of the poem, but of the subject of it. The name- - pronounced, of course, as four syllables is at any rate formed from Adonis (see note on 1. 12), and is intended to suggest his beauty and lamentable fate.

Neither Shelley nor Byron approved of Keats's early poems. But Shelley, at least, said of the fragment Hyperion that it was "second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years," and he was sincerely concerned when he heard that Keats was ill. He wrote to Mrs. Leigh Hunt: "Where is Keats now? I am anxiously expecting him in Italy, where I shall take care to bestow every possible attention on him. . . . I intend to be the physician both of his body and his soul. . . . I am aware indeed, in part, that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me; and this is an additional motive, and will be an added pleasure." Keats, however, went to Rome, and Shelley, who was in Pisa, knew of his death only by report, which, as he says in his preface, accounts for the fact that he did not celebrate in the poem the friendship and care of the painter Severn, who "almost risked his own life and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend." The poem is no less the product of Shelley's indignation against reviewers in general and the writer of the savage criticism of Endymion in the Quarterly Review in particular, than of his sorrow for the death of Keats. And it perhaps suffers from what Shelley himself calls the "interposed stabs on the assassins of his peace and of his fame." Shelley was, of course, wrong in supposing that the unfavorable criticisms of the Quarterly Review (or the still more savage ones of Blackwood's Magazine) seriously affected the health of Keats. Keats himself said: "Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of his own

works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood's or the Quarterly could possibly inflict and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in regard to the slipshod Endymion."

Adonais, though one of the most beautiful poems in the language, is one of the most difficult to read with thorough comprehension. This arises from two facts. In the first place, Shelley was at this time steeped in classical literature, and not only is his verse packed with classical allusions and reminiscences, but his diction also is subtle and often affected by classical usage. His confidence that the poem had not been "born to an immortality of oblivion" has, of course, been fulfilled. He was no less right in calling it a highly wrought piece of art than in declaring that "it is absurd in any review to criticise Adonais and, still more, to pretend that the verses are bad." In the second place, the mysticism of the poem, based in large part upon the ideas of Plato, though perhaps furnishing the sincerest and most effective stanzas, involves many difficulties of thought for readers who have not already become somewhat familiar with these ideas. The best, indeed the indispensable, method of understanding and appreciating the poem thoroughly is to read for the classical allusions and reminiscences Bion's Lament for Adonis (Idyl I), Moschus's Lament for Bion (Idyl III), Theocritus's Song of Thyrsis (Idyl I), Vergil's Eclogues V and X, and Milton's Lycidas; and for the mystical ideas, Plato's Timæus, Phædrus, and Phado, Spenser's Hymn in Honor of Beauty (p. 120), and Hymn of Heavenly Beauty (p. 121), and Wordsworth's Lines Composed Above Tintern Abbey, l. 93-102 (p. 385). For the doctrine of Plato's ideas, some readers may prefer to consult, instead of Plato himself, the summary and discussion by Walter Pater in Plato and Platonism, Chap. VII. It is not enough to consult the works enumerated above, when references are given in the notes. They should be read after the poem has been read carefully at least once, and then the poem should be read again; for the study of literary relationships becomes vital only when it is a study of related wholes, not of minor details.

The verse is the well-known Spenserian stanza. It is interesting to contrast the effect of it as used by Shelley with its effect as used by Spenser, on the one hand, and Byron, on the other. Although the same metrical scheme is used by each of these writers, the effects produced are as different as if the metrical schemes were entirely different.

The general outline of the poem may be briefly indicated. l. 1-9, The subject stated. ll. 1072, Appeal to Urania to come where Adonais lies. 11. 73-153, The lamentations of Dreams, Desires, Adorations, Morning, Ocean, Echo, Spring, and the Nightingale. ll. 154-189, Contrast between the renewal of nature and the fate of man. 11. 190261, The visit of Urania to the bier of Adonais, and her lament. ll. 262-315, The visit of the "mountain shepherds." ll. 316-342, Attack upon the critic of the Quarterly. ll. 343-369, Denial that the passing away from earth is death. II. 370-396, The incorporation of Adonais with "the loveliness which once he made more lovely" as his part in the work of the "One Spirit." ll. 397-414, The welcome accorded him by "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown." ll. 415-459, Rebuke of any one so foolish as not to recognize the fate of Adonais as a blessed one. 11. 460-495, The thirst of the soul for the Absolute, the Eternal Beauty, Light, and Truth.

Cf. Bion, ll. 1 ff.

I

1. 1. 1. 3. so dear a head. Horace's Odes, I, xxiv, 2. 1. 4. Hour. Not one of the classical Horae, but a personification of the hour made illustrious by the death of Keats (cf. obscure in the next line). 1. 10. Where wert thou. Cf. the Song of Thyrsis (Theocritus, Idyl I) and Vergil, Eclogue X.

1. 12. Urania is clearly the Uranian Aphrodite discussed in Plato's Banquet, 180, 187, etc., and there identified with the Muse, who is mentioned in the Phædrus in the following terms: "But to Calliope, the eldest, and Urania, the second of the nine, they bare tidings of those who pass their lives in philosophic study and the observance of their peculiar music, these we know being the muses who having heaven for their special sphere, and words both divine and human, pour forth the gladdest strains." It is the Uranian Aphrodite who is the mighty mother of all living things (1. 10). This phase of Aphrodite, or Venus, is not only celebrated by Plato and Greek poets, but is also the subject of the magnificent lines with which Lucretius begins his De Rerum Natura. This explains why Adonais is made the son of the Uranian Aphrodite in contrast to Adonis, the lover of the Pandemian Aphrodite.

1. 16. melodies, referring not merely to the Ode to the Nightingale, but to all the poems written by Keats after he became aware of his condition. wake and weep. Cf. Bion, ll. 3, 4.

1. 20.

1. 24.

where all things wise and fair descend.

Cf. Bion, 1. 55.

1. 29. He died. Cf. Moschus, ll. 71 ff., who celebrates Homer as Shelley here does Milton.

AE

P. 467. 1. 36. the third. The other two are certainly Homer and Dante. See Shelley's Defense of Poetry, where he not only calls Homer, Dante, and Milton the three great epic poets, but speaks of Vergil as not among the highest. 1. 39. "Those who recognize their limitations"; perhaps a reminiscence of the words of Socrates in the Phædrus: "I possess something of prophetic skill, though no very great amount, but like indifferent writers just enough for my own purposes."

1. 46. Cf. Moschus, ll. 74, 75.

1. 47. Cf. Bion, 1. 59.

1. 69. The eternal Hunger, the same as invisible Corruption (1. 67).

1. 73. The quick Dreams, the poetical conceptions of Keats, here take the place of the Graces, the Muses, etc., of Bion and Moschus.

1. 78. Cf. "Those thoughts that wander through eternity," Paradise Lost, II, 148. 1. 88. Cf. l. 14.

P. 468. l. 127. Lost Echo. Cf. Bion, ll. 35 ff., and Moschus, ll. 30-31.

ll. 133, 140, 141. The well-known stories of Echo, Narcissus, and Hyacinthus may be found in Gayley's Classic Myths or any classical dictionary.

1. 145. Moschus (11. 9 ff., cf. ll. 45 ff.) also calls upon the nightingale to lament for Bion, but Shelley has in mind Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, as is shown by thy spirit's sister.

11. 154 ff. The contrast between the yearly renewal of the flowers and the finality of human death is also the subject of one of the finest passages in the Lament for Bion, ll. 101 ff. P. 469. 1. 172.

earth.

The leprous corpse, i.e.,

1. 186. Mr. W. M. Rossetti's explanation that "in this our mortal state death is the solid and permanent fact . . . the phenomena of life are but like a transitory loan from the great emporium, death," seems out of harmony with the context. Throughout the stanza Shelley is talking about grief. Read the whole stanza carefully and note the must in l. 188 as well as in 1. 186.

ll. 212-213. Cf. what Agathon says of the feet of Love in Plato's Banquet, 195.

1. 219. Blushed to annihilation. The figure is rather difficult until one remembers that the essential nature of death implies paleness. Blush