on Arnold's memory. But what are his exact words? "The right sphere for Shelley's genius was the sphere of music." Now that, taken literally, is flat nonsense; and Arnold must on second thoughts have known it. It was just his way of saying a thing here, of conceding what he knew at least as well as anyone else—the fact that Shelley is a superlatively melodious poet. He goes on, "the medium of sounds he can master"-"does" would have been a handsomer word-"but to master the more difficult medium of words he has neither intellectual force enough, etc." If this were true it had yet been charitable to add, "or perchance he was not granted time enough": for Shelley, as you know, perished before his thirtieth birthday, and in the last two years of his life poured out lyric after lyric (most of them foretasting immortality before this mortal should put on incorruption) with a fevered haste as if driven by some second sense that his days were short: But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near. But is it true that Shelley failed to master words? I think I can guess at the half-truth which Arnold had in his mind and momentarily mistook for the genuine truth. I believe it was, consciously or unconsciously, dwelling on Keats for comparison. The gods gave to Keats a briefer time even than to Shelley. Yet, during it, by comparison, Keats sought the right word deliberately, even with extraordinary deliberation, as though surely, of set purpose, moving toward the high mastery of Dante or of Shakespeare. Take, for an instance or two: The moving waters at their priestlike task A laughing schoolboy, without grief or care, High prophetess, said I, purge off Solitary thinkings, such as dodge To cease upon the midnight with no pain. But we talk of Shelley. Before you accept such a diagnosis as Arnold's of the causes of the disease, will you restore the horse to his proper position before the cart and first ascertain for yourselves if the disease exists? Will you, for a simple test, turn to some lovely lyric, such as "When the lamp is shattered," and observe with what economy of epithet, with what direct use of words or sentences used in apposition, and thereby with what art concealing art, the exquisite emotional effect is attained? When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest; To endure what it once possessed. O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? V In Prometheus Unbound you will find a song (by the sixth spirit) in a metre which is basically a simple, even a common one, as common as Christy Minstrelsy. Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing: It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air, But treads with lulling footstep and fans with silent wing The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear. . . Now at Bracknell, in April, 1814—that is, in his twenty-second year-Shelley composed some stanzas which experiment upon this metre with the most flagrant and (to my mind) the most delicate pauses, stresses, cadences, undulations. I read a portion of the poem to you, in a previous lecture, on Byron. But because it illustrates Shelley's metrical audacity, and at the same time exhibits him in the act of learning and in process of attaining, at twenty-one, that mastery over words which Arnold denies him, and lastly because I have ever found it, in spite of some juvenile lapses, hauntingly sorrowful, hauntingly beautiful, I shall conclude today by attempting to read you the whole. It has no title. Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon, Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even: Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away! Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood: Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. Away, away! to thy sad and silent home; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head: The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet. The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep: Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows; Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep. Thou in the grave shall rest-yet till the phantoms flee Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile, Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile. SHELLEY (III) I T happened on the 19th of June, 1822,-the day when news of Leigh Hunt's arrival in Italy reached Shelley at Casa Magni, and started him preparing his small yacht for the cruise from which he was never to return alive that another and a very different Englishman mounted a stout cob at Kensington, to take holiday jogging the road through Edgware, Stanmore and Watford, to St. Albans. I suppose, indeed, that among notable men of the time you could hardly choose a pair more dissimilar, in temperament, habit and person, than Shelley and William Cobbett; than the "pard-like spirit" whose mortal face remains fixed in our imagination as immortally young, ardent, beautiful-in motion so pard-like, or so like a very Ariel, that Trelawny at the close of their first meeting looked up to ask "Where is he?" and was answered "Who? Shelley! Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where"; than (shall we borrow so much as is true from Arnold's famous unfortunate sentence?) this angel ballasting, for his last voyage, his luminous wings with a volume of Sophocles and a volume of Keats on either hip; and that other farmer-like, positive, cynically-mouthed fellow turned sixty, trotting the home counties in dust-coloured coat, |