Very early Shelley began to publish poetry, but most of it was not worthy of a truly great poet. His first really fine poem is Alastor. It is written in blank verse, and represents a poet seeking in vain for his ideal of what is truly lovely and beautiful. Being unable to find that which he seeks, he dies. The poem is full of beautiful description, but it is sad, and in the picture of the poet we seem to see Shelley himself. Other long poems followed, poems which are both terrible and beautiful, but many years must pass before you try to read them. For Shelley's poetry is more vague, his meaning more elusive, than that of almost any other poet of whom we have spoken. It is rather for Shelley's shorter poems, his lyrics, that I would try to gain your love at present, for although he wrote The Cenci, the best tragedy of his time, a tragedy which by its terror and pain links him with Shakespeare, it is as a lyric poet that we love Shelley. "Here," says another poet,* "Shelley forgets that he is anything but a poet, forgets sometimes that he is anything but a child. . . . He plays truant from earth, slips through the wicket of fancy into heaven's meadow, and goes gathering stars." And of all our poets, Shelley is the least earthly, the most spiritual. But he loved the beautiful world, the sea and sky, and when we have heard him sing of the clouds and the skylark, of the wind and the waves of—
*Francis Thompson.
"The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born,"*
*Song.
when we have heard him sing of these, and have understood with our heart, they have an added meaning for us. We love and understand the song of the skylark better for having heard Shelley sing of it.
"Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
"Higher still and higher,
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The deep blue thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
"In the golden lightening
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
"The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight,
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
. . . . . . .
"All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
"What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.