The profounder spirit of Shelley’s poem yet leaves it a careless piece of work in comparison with Byron’s. The two false rhymes at the outset may not be of great importance, but there is something annoying in the dissyllabic rhymes of the second stanza. Dissyllabic rhymes are beautiful and enriching when they fall in the right place; that is, where there is a pause for the second little syllable to stand. For example, they could not be better placed than they would have been at the end of the shorter lines of this same stanza, where they would have dropped into a part of the pause. Another sin of sheer heedlessness—the lapse of grammar in The Skylark, at the top of page [296]—will remind the reader of the special habitual error of Drummond of Hawthornden.
The Waning Moon.—Page [298].
In these few lines the Shelley spirit seems to be more intense than in any other passage as brief.
Ode to the West Wind.—Page [299].
This magnificent poem is surely the greatest of a great post’s writings, and one of the most splendid poems on nature and on poetry in a literature resounding with odes on these enormous themes.
The Invitation.—Page [303].
No need to point to a poem that so shines as does this lucent verse.
La Belle Dame bans Merci.—Page [316].
Keats is here the magical poet, as he is the intellectual poet in the great sonnet following; and it is his possession or promise of both imaginations that proves him greater than Coleridge. In his day they seem to have found Coleridge to be a thinker in his poetry. To me he seems to have had nothing but senses, magic, and simplicity, and these he had to the utmost yet known to man. Keats was to have been a great intellectual poet, besides all that in fact he was.