No More Learning

Poem 268.

_Arcturi_: seemingly used for _northern stars_.

_And wild roses_, etc. Our language has no line modulated with more
subtle sweetness. A good poet _might_ have written _And roses
wild_:--yet this slight change would disenchant the verse of its peculiar
beauty.


Poem 270.

_Ceres' daughter_: Proserpine; _God of Torment_: Pluto.


Poem 271.

This impassioned address expresses Shelley's most rapt imaginations, and
is the direct modern representative of the feeling which led the Greeks
to the worship of Nature.


Poem 274.

The leading idea of this beautiful description of a day's landscape in
Italy is expressed with an obscurity not unfrequent with its author. It
appears to be,--On the voyage of life are many moments of pleasure,
given by the sight of Nature, who has power to heal even the worldliness
and the uncharity of man.

_Amphitrite_ was daughter to Ocean.

_Sun-girt City_: It is difficult not to believe that the correct reading
is _Seagirt_. Many of Shelley's poems appear to have been printed in
England during his residence abroad: others were printed from his
manuscripts after his death.
Hence probably the text of no English Poet
after 1660 contains so many errors. See the Note on No. 9.


Poem 275.

_Maenad_: a frenzied Nymph, attendant on Dionysus in the Greek
mythology.

_The sea-blooms_, etc. : Plants under water sympathise with the seasons
of the laud, and hence with the winds which affect them.


Poem 276.

Written soon after the death, by shipwreck, of Wordsworth's brother
John. This Poem should be compared with Shelley's following it. Each is
the most complete expression of the innermost spirit of his art given by
these great Poets:--of that Idea which, as in the case of the true
Painter (to quote the words of Reynolds), "subsists only in the mind:
The sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it; it is an idea
residing in the breast of the artist, which he is always labouring to
impart, and which he dies at last without imparting. "


Poem 278.

Proteus represented the everlasting changes united with ever-recurrent
sameness, of the Sea.


Poem 279.

_the Royal Saint_: Henry VI.




INDEX OF WRITERS.