IV.

Though the sound overpowers,

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing

A tone

Of some world far from ours,

Where music and moonlight and feeling

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Haunt the echoes of the hill ;
And feeling ever O too much!
The soft vibration of her touch,
As if her gentle hand, even now,
Lightly trembled on my brow;

And thus, although she absent were,
Memory gave me all of her

That even Fancy dares to claim :

Her presence had made weak and tame

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My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak

I sat and saw the vessels glide

Over the ocean bright and wide,

Like spirit-wingèd chariots sent
O'er some serenest element

For ministrations strange and far ;
As if to some Elysian star
Sailed for drink to medicine

Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.

And the wind that winged their flight
From the land came fresh and light,
And the scent of wingèd flowers,
And the coolness of the hours

Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,
Were scattered o'er the twinkling bay.
And the fisher with his lamp

And spear about the low rocks damp
Crept, and struck the fish which came
To worship the delusive flame.

Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
Extinguishes all sense and thought
Of the regret that pleasure leaves,
Destroying life alone, not peace!

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35

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THESE are two friends whose lives were undivided;
So let their memory be, now they have glided
Under the grave; let not their bones be parted,
For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.

1822.

5

NOTES.

66

ALASTOR.

THE circumstances in which this poem was written serve to throw light upon its meaning. Already at twenty-three Shelley was disillusioned of some eager and exorbitant hopes; the first great experiment of his heart had proved a failure; his boyish ardour for the enfranchisement of a people had been without result; his literary efforts had met with little sympathy or recognition; and, during the early months of the year, he had felt how frail was his hold on life, and had almost confronted that mystery which lies behind the veil of mortal existence" (Dowden's Life, Vol. I, p. 530). "In the spring of 1815," says Mrs. Shelley in her note on this poem, "an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption." The mood reflected in Alastor is the mood in which Shelley regarded his own past, with death staring him in the face. As he looks back on his life, he notes especially its isolation and apparent fruitlessness. He feels that he has been a creature alone and apart, pursuing aims which the mass of men do not understand, and thus cut off from the wholesome and stimulating sympathy of his fellows. This "selfcentred seclusion," as he explains in the Preface to the poem, is not the result of a cold or egoistic nature; he does not belong to the class described in the second paragraph of the Preface. His isolation is caused by the loftiness of his ideal and by his perfect devotion to it. He neglected attainable but imperfect good for the sake of ideal perfections which forever escape his grasp. One form of this devotion to the ideal is the desire for complete sympathy of mind and feeling, such as would be afforded by a woman in perfect harmony with his own highest self; it is this aspect of his eager but vain quest which is made especially prominent in Alastor.

These experiences, then, of Shelley's spiritual life and this mood in which he regards them, form the substance of the poem; the poet does not, however, describe these things directly: he symbolizes them in