CHAPTER XXVIII
The Allusiveness of Modern Poetry
Tehee! Tehee! O sweet delight!
He tickles this age who can
Call Tullia’s ape a marmosyte,
And Leda’s goose a swan!
Anon.
We have distinguished between impulses which are involved at all stages of development, their course and fate naturally varying with the stage, and those which do not go off at all except in developed minds. The responses of the non-mathematical and the mathematical mind to a formula illustrate the difference. It is the use of responses not available without special experience, which more than anything else narrows the range of the artist’s communication and creates the gulf between expert and popular taste.
In the second chorus of Hellas in the middle of the second stanza the rhythm, tune, and handling, though not the metre, become suddenly uncharacteristic of Shelley. A fullness of tone, a queer, gentle cadence, and a leisurely ease of movement belong to the fifth and following lines:
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim