Poems from Shelley

as they are original. Shadows began to people the grove, dense flocks of phantoms, of various quality and shape, who hid in the capes of kings, and rode across the tiara of popes; and some were old anatomies that hatched broods, and whose dead eyes took power and gave it to those who ruined earth; and some fell like flashes of discoloured snow on the bosoms of the young and were melted by the glow which they extinguished; and others, like small gnats, thronged about the brows of lawyer, statesman, priest, and theorist. Shelley invents all kinds

of them, and each has its meaning. These are the
thoughts, written or spoken, the work and the pas-
sions of men; all that men have poured forth from
their hearts or impressed upon the world; the old
theologies, the old doctrines of kingcraft whose dead
eyes have power; the political theories, poetry, philo-
sophies, which have been sent forth from the begin-
ning of humanity, but which poured forth so fast and
furious before the Revolution. Rousseau knows
whence they came.
"Each one

"Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows."

Shadows as they were, form was given them by the creative rays of the car, for all the thoughts and feelings of men are moulded by the mystery of life. And so moulded, and darkening all the ways of the pageant with the sense of the deep mystery that gave them

shape, they did their work, and hour by hour the unconquerable secret, embodied in the forms given to it by the infinite questioning of men, destroyed its victims.

From every form the beauty slowly waned;
From every firmest limb and fairest face
The strength and freshness fell like dust-

And long before the day of life

Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance

The sleepers in the oblivious valley died;

And some grew weary of the ghastly dance,
And fell as I have fallen, by the wayside ;-

And those fell soonest who had done most creative work; who had thought and felt and expressed the most—the more passionate, whether for good or evil, the worse off.

Those soonest from whose forms most shadows passed,
And least of strength and beauty did abide.

"Then what is Life?" I cried.

And with that cry all that Shelley wrote is ended.