ACT IV. The Fourth Act was an afterthought, composed at Florence a few months after the rest of the drama. The action proper was of course concluded with the end of the Third Act: yet we have had a consciousness throughout that not only the immediate personages but the entire universe of living forces were involved in the issue; and the union of Prometheus and Asia, as well as the general statements of the Third Act, leave us unsatisfied. We demand some expression of rapture from those chorus-voices which have lent so much charm to each stage of the poem. The Fourth Act, that great symphony of rejoicing, where all voices of nature and of the mind sing their triumph, is thus no arbitrary addition, but an essential fulfilment of the artistic and spiritual unity of the drama. "It is difficult to speak highly enough of the fourth act so far as lyrical fervor and lambent play of imagination are concerned, both of them springing from ethical enthusiasm. It is the combination of these which makes this act the most surprising structure of lyrical faculty, sustained at an almost uniform pitch through a very considerable length of verse, that I know of in any literature. One ought perhaps to except certain passages, taken collectively, in Dante's Paradiso. These are doubtless quite as intense and quite as beautiful, and are even more moving, as being blended with a definite creed, and the heights and depths of emotion, personal and historical, which throb along with that. Shelley's theme has no such inner pulse of association; it becomes therefore all the more arduous and crucial an attempt.". WILLIAM ROSSETTI. The last Act is "the most sublime hymn ever uttered to the glory of the eternal harmony of nature, as apprehended by the human soul in communion with her." - F. RABBE. The Act falls into three great divisions, with transitions marked by the comments of Ione and Panthea, who still retain their rôle of interpreters. In the first third, the Hours, past and future, and the Spirits of the Human Mind join in joyful choruses of thankful glee. The second part gives us a grand antiphon of rejoicing between the Spirit of the Earth and of the Moon. Finally, Demogorgon, the Power no longer of Destruction but of Life, solemnly invokes dead and living spirits to listen to his words; and when in answering music they attest their presence, and we feel the harmony of the redeemed creation speaking through their words, he utters in cadence grave and serene his final message, and the final message of Shelley. 1. 1. The pale stars are gone! The music of these first lyrics is tripping, delicate, and light—almost too light, indeed, if we fail to remember that it is a prelude to the graver harmony that follows. 1. 12. Spectres we. This faint strain of minor music leads exquisitely into the glorious fulness of triumphant song. The literal mind will find it difficult to understand how Time can be "borne to his tomb in Eternity" while the Earth and Moon yet circle round the Sun; but the poetry is none the less beautiful because the symbols are mixed. 1. 54. With the thunder of gladness. "Mr. Rossetti has suggested the substitution of madness for gladness here, to get a rhyme instead of an echo. The proposed reading has all to recommend it except authority and necessity."-FORMAN. 1. 60. Oh, below the deep. The broken cadences and repercussive notes should be carefully noted through all the Act. They add much to the wild freedom and charm of the melody. 1. 116. His Dadal wings. A favorite epithet with Shelley. Cf. III. i. 26; IV. 416. These Spirits of the Human Mind are of course the same who brought consolation to Prometheus in Act I. They "are now at last free to soar through all the universe with the frank scepticism of children. Compare Walt Whitman's lines: "O my brave soul! O farther, farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God? The swallow-like flight of these spirits, which seem to pass and repass before the reader's eyes, gleaming, vanishing, and then gleaming again, is subtly suggested by the airy freaks and changes of their songs." TODHUNTER. 1. 163. Ceaseless, and rapid. The brief and irregular song-flights which we have had so far now merge into an anapæstic verse-movement, even and smooth from the very intensity of its swiftness. 1. 181. As the bare green hill. One of the wonderfully lovely nature vignettes, perfect in a few lines, which abound in the Fourth Act. The sweet little touch of earthly, homely beauty affords rest and relief after the spirit-music to which our ears have become attuned. 1. 186. 'Tis the deep music. This speech, with the following speech of Ione, may be understood to describe the melody of the drama. Study the difference in tone-color in the two speeches. 1. 194. But see where. Through this description, we are in full mysticism. Perhaps the grand duet to follow would be more effective if introduced by less elaborate machinery. 1. 208. By ebbing night. Mr. Thomson points out that the epithet is incorrectly used, and compares the correct use in III. ii. 111. Cf. the Triumph of Life, 79–84. 1. 219. White Its countenance. The intense shining of these lines is wonderful. 1. 221. Rossetti proposes to amend: "Its feathers are as plumes of sunny frost," thus making the line metrically correct. Perhaps it is fantastic to feel a certain charm in the hovering movement of the line as it stands. 1. 236. And from the other. This mythical vision of the Earth, with the Spirit sleeping at its heart, is hard to understand, but marvellous in suggestion. 1. 242. Purple and azure. This text conforms to Shelley's original edition, and to Mr. Swinburne's preference, in omitting the “and” inserted by Rossetti and Forman between "white" and "green." 1. 245. Such as ghosts dream. A fine instance of the tenuity of Shelley's imagination. 1. 281. Valueless. Meaning, of course, by a usage common in Shel. ley, "beyond all value." 1. 282. Crystalline. See note, III. iii. 292. 1. 287. The beams flash on. Shelley's curious cosmology, in the remainder of this speech, would hardly commend itself to a modern geologist. According to him, the remains of ancient civilizations are seemingly buried in the deepest strata of the earth, while above them lie the fossils of antediluvian monsters, with behemoth and the jagged alligator on top. But let us not be too literal. 11. 319-502. The duet between Earth and Moon. Who are the speakers? Mr. Forman considers them to be the Spirit of the Earth and the Spirit of the Moon. It is obvious that the old Gaia, the EarthMother of Act I., is not speaking here; but neither do these speeches, with their masculine tone and virile music, seem to come from the childspirit of the Earth whom Panthea has just described so tenderly (261– 268). May it not be that we have here a third conception, approaching to the conception held by modern science, exalted by the imagination? There is a realism about the words of the Earth which we do not find earlier. Mr. Rossetti says: "On the whole we must, I think, assume that Earth and Moon in their large general character as members of the solar system are the essential speakers; but represented on the spot visibly and emotionally by the Spirit of the Earth, a boy, and the Spirit of the Moon, an infant girl, who are touched into a sort of choral consonance with these more potent entities." James Thomson, with better insight says: "The chanting Earth of this Fourth Act is in truth neither the mythological Mother nor the simple child-spirit of the preceding Acts, but, as was imperative for the full development of the poet's thought, our own natural Earth, the living, enduring root of these and of all other conceptions, mythologic, imaginative, rational; the animate World-sphere instinct with spirit, personified as masculine in relation with the feminine Moon, as it would be no less rightly personified as feminine in relation with the masculine Sun: the inspired singer, soaring impetuously into a far ideal future, casting off from him all in his first conceptions that could limit or impede his flight.” 1. 319. The joy, the triumph. The Love which is the theme of the drama is here extended from Man to the Universe. The Earth is masculine, the Moon feminine. The Earth expresses a passionate and tumultuous triumph; the Moon a serene yet absorbing joy. The lyrics of the two correspond closely in form, differ widely in effect. The rhyme-scheme is the same, a aba a b, except that the Moon gains a tenderer, more lingering cadence by a final line, a aba abb. The measure of the Earth-songs is iambic pentameter (bis), iambic hexameter: that of the Moon-songs just one foot shorter, e.g. iambic tetrameter (bis), iambic pentameter, ending with iambic dimeter. The music of the earth is "a deep and rolling harmony"; that of the moon, under-notes, “clear, silver, icy, keen-awakening tones,”echo-melody in a lighter key. The punctuation at the close of this stanza and the next is Rossetti's 1. 367. Winged clouds. The poetry of science. 1. 370. It interpenetrates. In the preceding stanza, the Earth has expressed its exultation in the fall of evil; it now proceeds to chant the glory of the new freedom wrought by love. "Love" is the subject of the sentence to line 380, and again of lines 385-387. The punctua tion is seemingly obscure. 1. 394. Man, oh, not men! A curious expression, in which Shelley seems to anticipate the socialistic conception of humanity as a complete organism rather than an aggregate of separate units. 1. 400. Man, one harmonious. The next four stanzas are a glorious pæan of humanity. The first two stanzas deal with man's nature; the last two with his power over art, language, the natural world. The concluding stanza reads like a prophecy, which the scientific discoveries during the fifty years following Shelley's life went far to fulfil, but which is not yet accomplished perfectly. 1. 432. Half unfrozen. In Shelley's own edition, "half-infrozen." Mr. Rossetti adopts Shelley's reading. 1. 457. Thou art speeding. Notice the trochees. This is the most wonderful instance of that use of scientific fact for imaginative purposes which makes the treatment of nature in this Act of the Prometheus Unbound startling in its modernness. Few instances of this peculiar mode of handling occur in the earlier Acts; it almost seems as if a prophetic power had descended on Shelley as he wrote of the future harmony between Man and Nature. 1. 493. And the weak day weeps. Mr. Rossetti assigns these two lines to the Moon; there is, however, no authority for the reading, and we may better consider the passage as a last and most exquisite instance of the free and broken music which we have found throughout the drama. Concerning this duo between Earth and Moon, M. Rabbe, Shelley's able French biographer, writes: "Michelet in La Mer has written like a poet of the symphony of worlds of which science is endeavoring to read the score; of the mathematical relation of the stars between themselves, which are the harmonic intervals of the celestial music. 'The Earth,' he says, 'in her tides, greater and less, speaks to her sisters the planets. Do they reply? We must believe they do. From their fluid elements they too must rise up, conscious of the impulse of |