Shelley and the Unromantics

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Methuen & Company, Limited, 1924 - 307 pages
The author's view of Shelley's character is founded entirely upon his subject's works, particularly his letters, and upon the profound impression his unusual personality made on contemporaries very unlike himself.

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Page 241 - mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean. Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm.
Page 37 - The isles of Greece ! the isles of Greece ! "Where burning Sappho loved and sung, — Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung ! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.
Page 222 - As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades : Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: — do I wake or sleep?
Page 119 - What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship — what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit ; what were our consolations on this side of the grave — and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say,
Page 296 - But often, in the world's most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course ; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us, — to know Whence our lives come, and where they go.
Page 118 - Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with its belief.
Page 36 - What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's king Cheops erected the first pyramid, And largest, thinking it was just the thing To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid; But somebody or other, rummaging, Burglariously broke his coffin's lid: Let not a monument give you or me hopes, Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.
Page 122 - We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver. Streaking the darkness radiantly ! — yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever : "Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast ; To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.
Page 297 - His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor.
Page 294 - Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone ? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

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