POEMS NARRATIVE, ELEGIAC AND VISIONARY ALASTOR OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE PREFACE [By Shelley] An the mind THE poem entitled "ALASTOR," may be considered as allegorical of one of the most allegory of interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications. a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But A The the period arrives when these objects cease "moral" of to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly the poem awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on first" this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet "The The good die first, December 14, 1815. of the ALASTOR OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.-Confess. St. August. Invocation EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood! visible If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel world Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; Mother of this unfathomable world! Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched 20 Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, 30 Like an inspired and desperate alchymist Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday Has shone within me, that serenely now Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 40 I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 50 and the universal mother |