The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
Changes, surprises,"A
A: Fra Lippo Lippi.
lead him back to God, who made it all.
He is essentially a witness to the divine element in the world.
It is the rediscovery of this divine element, after its expulsion by the age of Deism and doubt, that has given to this century its poetic grandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era, we may say that England first felt the breath of the returning spirit in the poems of Shelley and Wordsworth.
"The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,