THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF SHELLEY'S POETRY
I.
I.
Yeats
Then he began, he tells us, to meditate how
this great difference might be ended and a new life, which would
permit men to have beauty in common among them as the starlings have,
be built on the wrecks of the old life. In other words, his mind was
illuminated from within and lifted into prophecy in the full right
sense of the word, and he saw the natural things he was alone gifted
to see in their perfect form; and having that faith which is alone
worth having, for it includes all others, a sure knowledge established
in the constitution of his mind that perfect things are final things,
he announced that all he had seen would come to pass. I do not think
he troubled to understand books of economics, and Mr. Mackail says,
I think, that they vexed him and wearied him. He found it enough to
hold up, as it were, life as it is to-day beside his visions, and to
show how faded its colours were and how sapless it was. And if we had
not enough artistic feeling, enough feeling for the perfect that is,
to admit the authority of the vision; or enough faith to understand
that all that is imperfect passes away, he would not, as I think, have
argued with us in a serious spirit. Though I think that he never used
the kinds of words I use in writing of him, though I think he would
even have disliked a word like faith with its theological associations,
I am certain that he understood thoroughly, as all artists understand
a little, that the important things, the things we must believe in or
perish, are beyond argument. We can no more reason about them than
can the pigeon, come but lately from the egg, about the hawk whose
shadow makes it cower among the grass. His vision is true because it
is poetical, because we are a little happier when we are looking at
it; and he knew as Shelley knew by an act of faith that the economists
should take their measurements not from life as it is, but from the
vision of the world made perfect that is buried under all minds. The
early Christians were of the kin of the Wilderness and of the Dry Tree,
and they saw an unearthly Paradise, but he was of the kin of the Well
and of the Green Tree and he saw an Earthly Paradise.
He obeyed his vision when he tried to make first his own house, for he
was in this matter also like a child playing with the world, and then
houses of other people, places where one could live happily; and he
obeyed it when he wrote essays about the nature of happy work, and when
he spoke at street corners about the coming changes.
He knew clearly what he was doing towards the end, for he lived at a
time when poets and artists have begun again to carry the burdens that
priests and theologians took from them angrily some few hundred years
ago. His art was not more essentially religious than Rossetti's art,
but it was different, for Rossetti, drunken with natural beauty, saw
the supernatural beauty, the impossible beauty, in his frenzy, while he
being less intense and more tranquil would show us a beauty that would
wither if it did not set us at peace with natural things, and if we did
not believe that it existed always a little, and would some day exist
in its fulness. He may not have been, indeed he was not, among the
very greatest of the poets, but he was among the greatest of those who
prepare the last reconciliation when the Cross shall blossom with roses.
1902.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY'S POETRY
I. HIS RULING IDEAS
WHEN I was a boy in Dublin I was one of a group who rented a room in
a mean street to discuss philosophy. My fellow-students got more and
more interested in certain modern schools of mystical belief, and I
never found anybody to share my one unshakable belief. I thought that
whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent, and
that one should begin to arrange it in some regular order, rejecting
nothing as the make-believe of the poets. I thought, so far as I can
recollect my thoughts after so many years, that if a powerful and
benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better
discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's
desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation,
wherein the heart withers. Since then I have observed dreams and
visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has
some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its
commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent,
are the most binding we can ever know. I have re-read _Prometheus
Unbound_, which I had hoped my fellow-students would have studied as a
sacred book, and it seems to me to have an even more certain place than
I had thought, among the sacred books of the world. I remember going
to a learned scholar to ask about its deep meanings, which I felt more
than understood, and his telling me that it was Godwin's _Political
Justice_ put into rhyme, and that Shelley was a crude revolutionist,
and believed that the overturning of kings and priests would regenerate
mankind. I quoted the lines which tell how the halcyons ceased to
prey on fish, and how poisonous leaves became good for food, to show
that he foresaw more than any political regeneration, but was too
timid to push the argument. I still believe that one cannot help
believing him, as this scholar I know believes him, a vague thinker,
who mixed occasional great poetry with a phantastic rhetoric, unless
one compares such passages, and above all such passages as describe
the liberty he praised, till one has discovered the system of belief
that lay behind them. It should seem natural to find his thought full
of subtlety, for Mrs. Shelley has told how he hesitated whether he
should be a metaphysician or a poet, and has spoken of his 'huntings
after the obscure' with regret, and said of that _Prometheus Unbound_,
which so many for three generations have thought _Political Justice_
put into rhyme, 'It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his
own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem.
They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of
distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write
prose metaphysical essays on the Nature of Man, which would have served
to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered
fragments of observation and remarks alone remain. He considered
these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with
the intensest spirit of poetry. ' From these scattered fragments and
observations, and from many passages read in their light, one soon
comes to understand that his liberty was so much more than the liberty
of _Political Justice_ that it was one with Intellectual Beauty, and
that the regeneration he foresaw was so much more than the regeneration
many political dreamers have foreseen, that it could not come in its
perfection till the hours bore 'Time to his grave in eternity.
this great difference might be ended and a new life, which would
permit men to have beauty in common among them as the starlings have,
be built on the wrecks of the old life. In other words, his mind was
illuminated from within and lifted into prophecy in the full right
sense of the word, and he saw the natural things he was alone gifted
to see in their perfect form; and having that faith which is alone
worth having, for it includes all others, a sure knowledge established
in the constitution of his mind that perfect things are final things,
he announced that all he had seen would come to pass. I do not think
he troubled to understand books of economics, and Mr. Mackail says,
I think, that they vexed him and wearied him. He found it enough to
hold up, as it were, life as it is to-day beside his visions, and to
show how faded its colours were and how sapless it was. And if we had
not enough artistic feeling, enough feeling for the perfect that is,
to admit the authority of the vision; or enough faith to understand
that all that is imperfect passes away, he would not, as I think, have
argued with us in a serious spirit. Though I think that he never used
the kinds of words I use in writing of him, though I think he would
even have disliked a word like faith with its theological associations,
I am certain that he understood thoroughly, as all artists understand
a little, that the important things, the things we must believe in or
perish, are beyond argument. We can no more reason about them than
can the pigeon, come but lately from the egg, about the hawk whose
shadow makes it cower among the grass. His vision is true because it
is poetical, because we are a little happier when we are looking at
it; and he knew as Shelley knew by an act of faith that the economists
should take their measurements not from life as it is, but from the
vision of the world made perfect that is buried under all minds. The
early Christians were of the kin of the Wilderness and of the Dry Tree,
and they saw an unearthly Paradise, but he was of the kin of the Well
and of the Green Tree and he saw an Earthly Paradise.
He obeyed his vision when he tried to make first his own house, for he
was in this matter also like a child playing with the world, and then
houses of other people, places where one could live happily; and he
obeyed it when he wrote essays about the nature of happy work, and when
he spoke at street corners about the coming changes.
He knew clearly what he was doing towards the end, for he lived at a
time when poets and artists have begun again to carry the burdens that
priests and theologians took from them angrily some few hundred years
ago. His art was not more essentially religious than Rossetti's art,
but it was different, for Rossetti, drunken with natural beauty, saw
the supernatural beauty, the impossible beauty, in his frenzy, while he
being less intense and more tranquil would show us a beauty that would
wither if it did not set us at peace with natural things, and if we did
not believe that it existed always a little, and would some day exist
in its fulness. He may not have been, indeed he was not, among the
very greatest of the poets, but he was among the greatest of those who
prepare the last reconciliation when the Cross shall blossom with roses.
1902.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY'S POETRY
I. HIS RULING IDEAS
WHEN I was a boy in Dublin I was one of a group who rented a room in
a mean street to discuss philosophy. My fellow-students got more and
more interested in certain modern schools of mystical belief, and I
never found anybody to share my one unshakable belief. I thought that
whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent, and
that one should begin to arrange it in some regular order, rejecting
nothing as the make-believe of the poets. I thought, so far as I can
recollect my thoughts after so many years, that if a powerful and
benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better
discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's
desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation,
wherein the heart withers. Since then I have observed dreams and
visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has
some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its
commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent,
are the most binding we can ever know. I have re-read _Prometheus
Unbound_, which I had hoped my fellow-students would have studied as a
sacred book, and it seems to me to have an even more certain place than
I had thought, among the sacred books of the world. I remember going
to a learned scholar to ask about its deep meanings, which I felt more
than understood, and his telling me that it was Godwin's _Political
Justice_ put into rhyme, and that Shelley was a crude revolutionist,
and believed that the overturning of kings and priests would regenerate
mankind. I quoted the lines which tell how the halcyons ceased to
prey on fish, and how poisonous leaves became good for food, to show
that he foresaw more than any political regeneration, but was too
timid to push the argument. I still believe that one cannot help
believing him, as this scholar I know believes him, a vague thinker,
who mixed occasional great poetry with a phantastic rhetoric, unless
one compares such passages, and above all such passages as describe
the liberty he praised, till one has discovered the system of belief
that lay behind them. It should seem natural to find his thought full
of subtlety, for Mrs. Shelley has told how he hesitated whether he
should be a metaphysician or a poet, and has spoken of his 'huntings
after the obscure' with regret, and said of that _Prometheus Unbound_,
which so many for three generations have thought _Political Justice_
put into rhyme, 'It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his
own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem.
They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of
distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write
prose metaphysical essays on the Nature of Man, which would have served
to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered
fragments of observation and remarks alone remain. He considered
these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with
the intensest spirit of poetry. ' From these scattered fragments and
observations, and from many passages read in their light, one soon
comes to understand that his liberty was so much more than the liberty
of _Political Justice_ that it was one with Intellectual Beauty, and
that the regeneration he foresaw was so much more than the regeneration
many political dreamers have foreseen, that it could not come in its
perfection till the hours bore 'Time to his grave in eternity.
