He was the Prometheus of the movement, he, the wild bird of song, who flew down into the heart of storm and night, singing unutterably sweet the song of the free man and woman as he passed. Poor Shelley! Happy Shelley! He died not knowing the triumph of his genius; but also he died while the white glow within was yet shining higher, higher! In the light of it, he smiled above the world; had he lived, he might have died alive, as Swinburne and as Tennyson whose old days belie their early strength. Yet men will remember
"Slowly comes a hungry people as a lion drawing nigher.
Glares at one who nods and winks beside a slowly dying fire."
and
"Let the great World swing forever down the ringing grooves of Change."
and
"Glory to Man in the highest for Man is the Master of Things"
and
"While three men hold together,
The kingdoms are less by three"
until the end "of kingdoms and of kings," though their authors "take refuge in the kingdom" and quaver palsied hymns to royalty with their cracked voices and broken lutes. For this is the glory of the living ideal, that all that is in accord with it lives, whether the mouthpiece through which it spoke would recall it or not. The manifold voice which is one speaks out through all the tongues of genius in its greatest moments, whether it be a Heine writing, in supreme contempt,