Or broke its cage to perch on mine, But knowing well captivity, Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in winged guise, A visitant from Paradise; For-Heaven forgive that thought! the while And then 't was mortal - well I knew, Lone as the corse within its shroud, as a solitary cloud, A single cloud on a sunny day, When skies are blue, and earth is gay. XI A kind of change came in my fate, Along my cell from side to side, And up and down, and then athwart, And tread it over every part; And round the pillars one by one, My brothers' graves without a sod; For if I thought with heedless tread XII I made a footing in the wall, It was not therefrom to escape, For I had buried one and all Who loved me in a human shape; And the whole earth would henceforth be A wider prison unto me: No child no sire—no kin had I, - No partner in my misery; I thought of this, and I was glad, To my barred windows, and to bend XIII I saw them and they were the same, A small green isle, it seemed no more, And on it there were young flowers growing, The fish swam by the castle wall, And they seemed joyous each and all; I had not left my recent chain; Fell on me as a heavy load; It was as is a new-dug grave, Closing o'er one we sought to save, - And yet my glance, too much oppressed, Had almost need of such a rest. XIV It might be months, or years, or days, And clear them of their dreary mote; At last men came to set me free, I asked not why, and recked not where, It was at length the same to me, Fettered or fetterless to be, I learned to love despair. And thus when they appeared at last, VII PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY N (1792-1822) I Aн, did you once see Shelley plain, II But you were living before that, III I cross'd a moor, with a name of its own IV For there I pick'd up on the heather ROBERT BROWNING. O prose writer ever adequately described Shelley, but without knowing it he described himself almost perfectly in his "To a Skylark." Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. There is Shelley for you, perfectly portrayed. If you do not like and understand this you will never care for Shelley. 66 One word alone seems to apply to Shelley, and that is "ethereal." And if we would know what ethereal" means, let us reread the “Skylark.” He was born a singer, like the lark, and he sings the things of the spirit as spontaneously, as inevitably, as Burns sang his love songs to any maiden who would listen. Shelley's life is open to criticism, but the purity of his ideals cannot be doubted. Says Professor Dowden: "There is a wisdom which the world sometimes counts as folly—that which consists in devotion at all hazards to an ideal, to what stands with us for the highest truth, sacred justice, purest love. And assuredly the tendency of Shelley's poetry, however we may venerate ideals other than his, is to quicken the sense that there is such an exalted wisdom as this and to stimulate us to its pursuit. . . . Shelley at the age of nineteen was possessed by an inextinguishable hope for the world and an enthusiasm of humanity which never ceased to inspire his deeds and words." ... If we cannot explain and reconcile what he did with what he professed, let us remember with Professor Dowden that "he was a creature, not of reason, not of intellect, not of moral purpose, not of passion, but of feelings and imaginations.' And again: "We are touched through his poetry with a certain divine discontent, so that not music nor sculpture nor picture nor song can wholly satisfy our spirits, but in and through these we reach after some higher beauty, |