EPIPSYCHIDION Of this Book Five Hundred Copies have been printed Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/epipsychidionOOshelrich •EPIPSYCHIDION BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY A TYPE FACSIMILE REPRINT OF THE ORIGINAL EDITION FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1821 With an Introduction by THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A. And a Note by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE EDITED BY ROBERT ALFRED POTTS OF r'-»«c UNIVERSITY Eontion PUBLISHED FOR THE SHELLEY SOCIETY BY REEVES AND TURNER 196 STRAND 1887 ^^ A v-^y^^ CONTENTS PAGE Editor's Pbefacb xi Bibliography i xvi Introduction , xi^ Notes by the Rev. S. A. Brooke xlv Note by A, C. Swinburne Ldii Reprint of Epipsychidion 102463 EDITOR'S PREFACE EDITOE'S PEEFACE. The noble and unfortunate Lady Emilia V , to whom this poem was addressed, was the elder of two daughters, by his first wife, of a Count Viviani, head of one of the most ancient families in Pisa. Her father in his old age took unto himself a wife not much older than either of the daughters. This lady, whose beauty did not equal that of the Counfs^children, was naturally jealous of their charms, and deemed them dangerous rivals in the eyes of her Cavaliere ; she therefore exerted all her in- fluence over her infatuated husband, and persuaded him, under pretence of completing their education, to place them each in a separate convent. Teresa Emilia, the eldest, had now been confined for two years in the Con- vent of St. Anna. Her father desired to see her married, but sought a husband for her who would take her off his hands without a dowry. Pacchiani, the friend and con- fessor to the family, and tutor to the children, made the Contessinas frequent subjects of bis conversation xii EPIPSYCHIBIOK. with the Shelleys, and spoke most enthusiastically of the beauty and accomplishments of Emilia. " Poverina," he said, " she pines like a bird in a cage — ardently longs to escape from her prison-house — pines with ennui, and wanders about the corridors like an unquiet spirit; she sees her young days glide on without an aim or purpose. She was made for love. ... A miserable place is that Convent of St. Anna/' /he added, " and if you had seen, as I have done, the poor pensionnaires shut up in that narrow, suffocating street in the summer (for it does not possess a garden), and in the winter, as now, shivering with cold, being allowed nothing to warm them but a few ashes, which they carry about in an earthen vase, you would pity them." This little story deeply interested Shelley, and induced him to visit the captive some time in December, 1820. The Convent of St. Anna, a ruinous building, was situated in an unfrequented street in the suburbs, not far from the walls. "After passing through a gloomy portal that led to a quadrangle, the area of which was crowded with crosses, memorials of old monastic times," writes Med win, ** we were in the presence of Emilia. . . . Emilia was indeed lovely and interesting. Her profuse black hair, tied in the most simple knot, after the manner of a EDITOR'S PREFACE. zui Greek Muse in the Florence Gallery, displayed to its full height her brow, fair as that of the marble of which I speak. She was also of about the same height as the antique. Her features possessed a rare faultlessness, and almost Grecian contour, the nose and forehead making a straight line. . . , Her eyes had the sleepy voluptuous- ness, if not the colour, of Beatrice Cenci's. They had, indeed, no definite colour, changing with the changing feeling to dark or light, as the soul animated them. Her cheek was pale, too, as marble, owing to her confine- ment and want of air, and perhaps to ' thought.' " Mrs. Shelley gave a very similar description of Emilia, under the name of Clorinda, in her novel of Lodore. It is hardly necessary to quote the further description of her as it is given at length in Dowden's Life of Shelley ; it only remains to state that the almost infatuated admiration of the idol declined almost as rapidly as it arose, to judge from Shelley's letter on the subject — that to Mr. Gisbome in June, 1822. Emilia married Biondi in 1822, and, according to the poet, led her husband and his mother "a devil of a life." She was seen by Medwin some years after her ill-starred wedding: as she lay on her couch and extended a thin hand, she was 80 changed that the visitor could hardly find a trace of her former beauty. Not loug after this interview, poisoned by xiv EPIPSYCHIDION. the malaria of the Maremma, and broken in heart and hope, Emilia died. It may be of interest to print here a portion of Shelley's letter to Mr, Oilier, as regards the Hpipsy- chidio7i : **PiSA, February 16th, 1821. " Dear Sik, " I send you three poems — Ode to Naples, a sonnet, and a longer piece, entitled Hpipsychidion. The two former are my own; and you will be so obliging as to take the first opportunity of publishing according to your own discretion. **The longer poem I desire should not be considered as my own ; indeed, in a certain sense, it is a production of a portion of me already dead ; and in this sense the advertisement is no fiction. It is to be published simply for the esoteric few ; and I make its author a secret, to avoid the malignity of those who turn sweet food into poison ; transforming all they touch into the corruption of their own natures. My wish with respect to it is, that it should be printed immediately in the simplest form, and merely one hundred copies : those who are capable of judging and feeling rightly with respect to a com- position of so abstruse a nature, certainly do not arrive at that number — among those, at least, who would EDITOR'S PREFACE. xv ever be excited to read an obscure and anonymous pro- duction; and it would give me no pleasure that the vulgar should read it. If you have any bookselling reason against publishing so small a number as a hundred, merely, distribute copies among those to whom you think the poetry would afford any pleasure, and send me, as soon as you can, a copy by the post. I have written it so as to give very little trouble, I hope, to the printer, or to the person who revises. I would be much obliged to you if you would take this office on yourself. ** I remain, dear Sir, ** Yoiu' very obedient servant, "Pebcy B. Shelley." BIBLIOGRAPHY. EpiPSTCHiDlON/verses addressed to the noble/and un- fortunate lady/EMiLlA V /now imprisoned in the con- vent of /L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel infinito/un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso/baratro. Her own words. London. C and J Oilier Vere Street Bond Street/ MDCCCXXI. Half-title, with imprint on verso. London/priated by S. and R. Bentley, Dorset-Street,/Salisbury-Square./ title, advertisement, with lines " My Song," &c., on verso ; and text pp. 7-31. The imprint, differently worded, is repeated on the reverse of p. 31. London/printed by S & R Bentley/Dorset Street/MDCCCXXi. The book was issued as a " stabbed pamphlet,'' without wrapper, and the exact measurement of an uncut copy is 8| X 5^ inches. The only separate reprint of Upipsychidion as yet pro- duced is a thin octavo volume, edited by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, and issued by him in 1876 for private circulation only. Details of the book will be found in the Shelley Uhranj, 1886, pp. 101 and 102. R. A. Potts. INTRODUCTION INTKODUCTION. The chaxm which belongs to Shelley, and the delight which a great poem kindles in the heart of man, have made Emilia Viviani, to whom the EpipsycMdio7i was written, one of the interesting women of the world. In her- self she does not deserve this great interest. She was intelligent, passionate, beautiful, unhappy, capable of small literature ; but of this type of women there are thousands in all classes of society of whom the world has never heard. But when Shelley idealized her, she became a personage, and all who loved Shelley made her a wonder. Medwin described her as one might describe a Greek Muse. Mrs. Shelley wrote a long description of her to Leigh Hunt, and painted her and her character under the name of Clorinda, in her novel of Lodore. Claire fell in love with her. Shelley, enthralled by her solitary and sorrowful position, thinking of her as the victim of oppression and taken for a time with her beauty, mingled XX EPIPSYCHIDION. her up with the ideal of Beauty he had created, partly from Plato, partly from his own thought ; and yet, even while he was with her, forgot the woman in the vision which she enabled him to spin out of his own imagination. When he had expressed this vision in the form of his poem, he left it behind him, and with it he left Emilia. And when he ceased to idealize her, his charm ceased to accompany her, and the rest of his circle hesitated no longer to see her in the rigid light of day. But this has not been the case with those who care for poetry. As long as Upipsy- chidion is read, Emilia Viviani will be a romantic figure. She may have become prosaic to Shelley, as she did ; Mary Shelley may have mocked at her and at Shelley's Platonics, but she is still alive in the world of the imagination of man, and so much alive that we are even angry when the veil of the common-place is thrown over her. Indeed, her tragic fate will always restore her to her poetic place. She for whom the Ionian isle had been pictured as a dwelling and perfect love as her joy, died, broken-hearted, poisoned by the deadly breath of the Maremma. And, as if she could not be kept out of the poetic atmosphere, we cannot help thinking of one, as fair, perhaps as unwise, who also perished in Maremma, though it may be of the dagger, not of the pestilence, and whom Dante has made alive for ever — " Eicord«,ti di me, che son la Pia ; Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma." INTKODUCno:N". XZl We keep her then, and we do so rightly, in the element of Shelley's poem, but/4f ever we wish to balance our impression, and to clearly understand that the woman and the poem belong to the ideal and not to the actual, we may take up Shelley's letters. Every one knows what he said afterwards of Epipsychidion and its subject. But the words which follow were written before he wrote the poem, and are cold and judicial. "I see Emily sometimes, and whether her presence is the source of pain or pleasure to me, I am equally ill-fated in both. I am deeply interested in her destiny, and the interest can in no manner influence it. She is not how- ever insensible to my sympathy, and she counts it among her alleviations. As much comfort as she receives from my attachment to her, I lose. There is no reason that you should fear any mixture of that which you call Love. My conception of Emilia's talents augments every day. Her moral nature is fine, but not above circumstances, yet I think her tender and true, which is always something. How many are only one of these things at a time." — Dowden's Life of Shelley, vol. ii., p. 389. That is quite enough. It has not the touch of any real passion. It was written, if Mr. Dowden's date be not a con- jecture, about a month before he began the Epipsychidion. During that month he saw Emilia continually ; her affection for him increased, and his for her ; and when he wrote the poem, he felt differently. Much of what he said was mixed, XXll EPIPSYCHIDION. consciously or unconsciously, with some love for the woman herself, for one who was the mortal image of the ideal creature whom he loved beyond the phenomenal world. And this love, rising through the intellectual imagery, and setting it on fire, redeems the poem from the coldness of a mere philosophy of love, and makes it passionate. It was the same, I think, in the Vita Nuova. Dante writes of the absolute Love, and the Wisdom which is at one with Love, and he represents this under the form of Beatrice. But he also writes — borne away by a real love — of Beatrice herself alone; and then again, seems to write of both together, as if the earthly and the heavenly passion were wrought into one. In Epipsychidion a similar thing takes place. Shelley sometimes speaks of Emilia as of a woman towards whom he feels love, and sometimes only of his Epipsychidion — the divine image of his soul, whom he feels through her, and who is veiled in her. The phrases change from being personal and passionate, to being impersonal and passionate. The image and the thing imaged are frequently fused into one. Emilia and the *' Soul out of his soul " are clasped together, like two hands, in the verse. But this is chiefly in the beginning of the poem. As he warms in his effort Emilia is neglected. She has done her work. He has ascended, through her, to the divine mistress of the world of his own thoughts — the spirit whom he describes in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, whom he had loDged for and pursued after all his rNTRODUCTION. xxiii life long, but whom he had never grasped. Emilia is but the passing shadow of this substance. For a moment, in the rush of his song and his thought, he seems to seize the substance at the end of the poem. But the effort is too great. He falls back from that high region with a 5* broken wing. " Woe is me," he cries — and he never tried to reach it again. Ejn][>sy^chidion is the last shape into which his idealism of Love was thrown. The greatness of the failure, following on the greatness of the effort, made him put this kind of thing away for ever. When*^ he spoke afterwards of the poem, he said — " It is a part of me which is already dead." And all the love poems which follow Hpipsychidion, are in the real world, without a trace of philosophy, inspired only by personal affection. I have said that there was a personal element in this i'^' poem, that Shelley had some feeling for Emilia herself. But there was another element of personaUty in it different from that which had to do with Emilia. He infused a |)ersonalily. into the ideal Beauty to which he aspired to unite himself. Plato did not impersonate his^^ idea of Beauty, but Shelley did this thing. He was forced by his nature to reaUse the idea in some form, and to realise it as belonging especially to himself. Hence ho created an Epipsychidion — " a soul out of his soul " — a heightened, externalised personality of himself, con- ^^ ceived as perfect; an ideal image of his own being; different in sex ; his complement ; originally part of him. ; xxiv EPIPSYCHIDION. now separated from him ; after whom he pursued ; whom he felt in all that was calm and sublime and lovely in knowledge, in nature, and in woman ; and to absolute union with whom, such union as is described in the latter half of JEjpipsychidion, he passionately aspired. And this being, since she was the essence of all the loveliness which he could conceive or feel, represented also to him and for him — ideal Beauty. This creation was not Platonic — Plato spoke only of the Idea of Beauty. This was an invention of Shelley's, an addition, to satisfy his cry for personality^ to the Platonic theory of love. He expresses it fully enough in his essay on Love ; and it reaches its extreme of mingled ideality and personality . in the poem of Epipsychidion. The history of the development of this conception is written in his poetry. In the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, he conceives of the Archetypal Beauty, the beauty which is the model and source of all beautiful forms, much as Plato might have conceived of it. It is not personal at all. It is a pervading spirit, whose shadow, but never whose substance, is seen. But this conception was soon changed. He wanted personality^ He embodied this archetype in a feminine being, existing in the super-phenomenal world, glimpses of whom he saw at times, and she was the other half of his own soul. " Her voice," he says in Alastor, " was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of Thought." INTRODUCTION. xxv And if he could have been content with that — if he could have kept himself wholly to the ideal personality — it had been well. But he bad not strength enough. He was always driven, by a weakness in his nature, to try and find her image in real women. His ideal love continually^' glided back into a desire of realising itself on earth ; and yet, when he attempted to realise it in any woman, she fell, or earthly love itself fell, so far fcelow the ideal image, that he was driven back again from the woman on earth to the ideal in his own soul. Thus smitten to i^ and fro, he had no peace. He was, as he calls himself in AcUmais, "a power girt round with weakness" — the creator of thoughts which afterwards pursued their creator as wolves pursue a deer, Alastor records the coming of this vision and the ^ agony of not being able to realise it. The poet, unable to be content with the love of abstract Beauty alone, unable to find it realised in any of its mortal images on earth; unable to live wholly in the super- sensuous world, unable to satisfy himself in the sensuous; ^^^ beaten and tortured between these two inabilities, dies of the pain of the struggle. Prince Athanase, as we discover from the commentary, would have recorded, perhaps step by step, the vicissitudes of this pursuit. A number of other poems contain ^'^ allusions to this conception which, from his long brooding on it, had become one of the roots of Shelley's life and n/ xxvi EPIFSYCHIDION. , character. Fjnpsychidion was its noblest, most triumphant, most complete expression, and in that expression of it, it perished. In the poem he recapitulates the whole history of this idea in his soul. He describes, first, the being whom his spirit, in his youth, oft " Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn," whose voice came to him from Nature, history, romance, and high philosophy, whose spirit was the harmony of truth. This is the Spirit in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. Then he describes, in the lines which begin — " Then from the caverns of my dreary youth " — the vain search for her, repeating in this passage the motive of the story of Alastor. In the midst of this, we come upon that phase of the pursuit which is not contained in Alastor, but is contained in the notes to Prince Athanase — the meeting with that false image of pure Beauty which awakens sensual love, a phase which is treated of by Plato — " There — one, whose voice was venomed melody Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers ; The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers ; Her touch was as electric poison." And this lower love may be compared with that dwelt on in Shakspere's later Sonnets, to which Shelley, speak- ing of Upipsychidion, refers. INTRODUCTION. xxvii Having thus recapitulated his youthful experience in 1 the pursuit of ideal Beauty, he next turns to show how he sought in mortal women, and in love of them, to find the shadow of this soul out of his soul — some image of the celestial substance of pure Beauty. He y goes through these women, one after another, and re- presents them under various symbols. I have elsewhere made some conjectures with regard to the actual women whom he represents under these symbols, but no certainty can be arrived at concerning them. Only one thing is ^ plain, Marjr Godwin is the Moon of the passage, and it is clear from what he says that she did not completely satisfy his heart. But she only fails to satisfy him so far as she is of the earth, and not of the ideal region. He was quite content with her as long as he chose to /^ live in the outward world. But for the supersensuous universe, and as a realisation of his spiritual bride, she was not enough. Then he meets Emilia ; and in her, for a time, at his first contact with her, he seems to meet the actual image, the earthly form of the ideal Beauty whom ^.^ he claims as the bride of his soul. In speaking of her, he mingles the ideal and the real together, the divine and the human. But as the poem goes on, the woman as a woman ceases to be palpable in his verse. There is no confusion then between the image of Emily and the ^^ thing imaged. ; Emily as a woman has disappeared. ^ There is nothing left but the vision of Beauty embodied xxviii EPIPSYCHIDION. in his E'pipsychidion, whom he seems at last to grasp, and whom he calls Emily. Sometimes a phrase of per- sonal passion slips in, because of his " error of seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal," but from the moment he cries — ** The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me" — he speaks only of the vision of his youth, of the personality of her who is his second soul or perhaps his very soul, of the substance of whom he only possesses a shadow ; of the spiritual form of the pure and ideal Beauty which, in the supersensuous world, belongs to him; of her whose pressure on him from without is the source of all his ideals, all his aspiration ; whom he feels speaking to him in all knowledge, love, nature, and thought. J Emilia herself is but one step in the ladder by which he has attained the vision of union with this pure, personal, spiritual, shape of Beauty. It is with her, under the name of Emily, that he flies away into the life beyond phenomena. ' The description of the flight is entirely symbolical. The Ionian isle and all else are meant to be impalpable, images of an immaterial world. No keel, he declares, has ever ploughed the sea-path to that island. It is cradled between Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, No scourges that afflict the earth visit it. A soul bums in the heart of it, an atom of the Eternal. And the passionate description of his life there with Emily is not INTRODUCTION. xxix a description of earthly passioru. It is the description of Shelley at last united to that other far-off half of his being, and the incorporation of the two into one is as incorporeal as the rest. It is a description of the one ideal yearning of the soul towards Beauty, of the only true love a"' which is felt in life (which but touches earthly women on its path as means towards its end), clasping at last its ideal in the immaterial world of pure Thought, and with the emotion of that Thought. But it is so far beyond that which is possible for man to realise continuously while '^ he is shut in by mere phenomena, that having attained it for a moment, he breaks down, and falls exhausted from the height. " Woe is me ! The wingM words on which my soul would pierce '•* Into the heights of Love's rare universe Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire I " The one true love of human life is then ideal, not in the world of the senses at all, and cannot be realised or "^^ satisfied by any thing or any one on earth. Its object, ideal Beauty, contains the substance of all the varied forms of beauty which we find in thought, in emotion, in nature, and in humanity. This Beauty is the one life in a million | forms which are themselves its painted shadows. Hence, ^** when we love man, woman, or any form of Nature, it is not these that primarily we love. Wc love the living % -f- XXX EPIPSYCHIDION. spirit of Beauty, of which each of them is one phase alone, and we love these, that we may pass beyond them to the spirit that they partially express. They are steps in a ladder by which we reach the perfect reality. Hence arose a theory of personal human love which traverses the code of social morals, and that theory Shelley held. It was, that to bind ourselves down to one object of love alone was not wise, because then we rendered our- selves incapable of seeing and realising those different aspects of the ideal Beauty which we could find in other minds, in other personalities. When we limit our loves, we limit our capacity, so far, of grasping a full conception of Beauty. He introduces, logically enough, this view of his into the midst of E]pijpsychidion. Whether Mary liked that theory, whether it has any rightness in it at all, how far Shelley practised it, or refrained from putting it into practice, is not the question now. He held it in theory, and he places it here. He never was attached, he says, to that great sect " Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion." Feeling immediately that it wifl be said that to love more than one person in this relation is to destroy love, he expands his theory by stating that love is of such a quality that it is not lost by boing divided. The first object INTRODUCTION. xxxi of love is not less loved, but more loved, by the person who loves, when he gives love to other objects, to other persons. TwwA^jg^ |i]rp nnHfvj^ standing which grow s bri ght b y ga-^j^g ! / onmanyjtruths. Nay, if love is given to only one object, ! it builds for itself a grave. Again, when we divide the base things of life, suffering and dross, we may diminish them until they are consumed. But if we divide the nobler things, pleasure, and love, and thought, each part exceeds the whole, and we know not " How much, wliile any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared," to man. This is a theory capable of being used to promote licentiousness by those who have the sensual idea of love and beauty. By Shelley, who abhorred not only sensuality, but even claimed the world beyond the senses (the world of ideas), as the only real world, it could not be used in that manner. But it made him run counter to the code of morals which prevails in society in the question of his first wife. The moment he ceased to love Harriet Westbrook he considered himself as no longer married to her, and went away with a woman he did love. He never ceased to love Mary, and therefore he was always faithful to her. But he saw no reason whatever why he should not, while he was faithful to his marriage tie, give deep affection to other women, and find represented in them other phases xxxii EPIPSYCHIDION. of the absolute Beauty, which phases he was bound to feel and gain through them. And this he did — though society necessarily condemned his action — with a conviction of his lightness. Emilia represented, and with astonishing force to him, one of these forms of the ideal Beauty, and enabled him, through his affection for her, to get nearer to realisation of it than he had ever done before. It is therefore quite natural that the statement of this theory should be as it were the centre piece of the poem. I turn now to the poetical quality of the poem and to the characteristics of Shelley's work displayed in it. It is an exceedingly personal poem, and contains almost all Shelley's weaknesses and powers, and both these at their height, because writing, and writing passionately, about his own inward life, he was under no such restraint as a subject apart from himself would naturally furnish. Here nothing that he thought seemed ii-relevant, for the subject was his own thought. He starts on his way like a stream at its first rush from its mountain source. The introduction is short, but ends with a phrase which shows how he chose, from the very beginning, to throw off all literary reticence — " I weep vain tears, blood would less bitter be, Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee." And then we are afloat not on a river, but on a torrent, on whose swift and flashing surface, as we move, we have INTRODUCTION. xxxiii scarcely time to breathe. This marks the whole poem. It is the most rapid of all his works. There is only one pause in it — just before the torrent changes into a deeper, quieter stream, but a stream even more swift than the torrent. The pause is where he stops to describe the theory of love which he held. That is, as it were, the portage in the midst of the descent of the river ; the halt on the wayside before the race is taken up again, with the goal in sight. He begins by a description of Emily, but far more a description of the image of Beauty he worshipped in the calm of his soul. The phrases change, as I said, from Emilia to the Beauty she shadows, and from that Beauty back again to her. The two are mingled as Form and Idea are mingled. It was a constant artistic habit of his, when he had foimd a theme — and I use the word in its musical sense — a theme such as he finds in the lines — *' Seraph of Heaven — too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman All that is insupportable in thee Of Light and Love and Immortality " — to vary that theme as long as he could, changmg the key, and then following eagerly the new thoughts, with their correlative emotions, which were suggested by the change of key. He follows these wherever they lead him, no matter into what strange places ; inspired, but with an ^^^v EPIPSYCHIDION. ungirdled inspiration. He did not retain, save rarely, that steady command over his materials, that power of choice and rejection over his imaginations which the greatest artists possess. In his eager movement of improvisa- tion he frequently puts down every thought — and the thoughts are shaped in metaphors — which occurs to him, and too often trusts to accumulation rather than to choice to produce his effect. There are fine exceptions, the best of which is the Ode to the West Witid, but they are exceptions. Again, he is often forced, in order to get his thought into form before him, to shape it into a multitude of metaphors, each without connection with its companions, and at the end to find that he has failed to satisfy himself. The thought is not shaped. The greater poet, like Homer, would have chosen one comparison and done all he wanted with one. Three times Shelley, working in this way, returns to the charge at the beginning of this poem, and three times he records his failure. The series of metaphors which call the Seraph of Heaven who is hidden in Emilia — " Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe ! Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! Thou living Form Among the Dead ! Thou Star above the Storm 1 Thou Wonder and thou Beauty and thou Terror 1 Thou Harmony of Nature's art ! Thou Mirror In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on ! " INTRODUCTION. xxxv — ten metaphors — end in his saying that his words are dim and obscure her, as they certainly do. The next attempt to embody his thought, in a changed key, begins with Sweet Lamp ; my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings/* and ends, after thirteen metaphors, with another confession of failure — "I measure The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, And find, alas, mine own infirmity." By this time, however, Shelley, who always warmed while he wrote, his own music thrilling him into quicker creation (one of the marks of him as a great artist being that at the end of his poems he becomes a greater poet than at the beginning, — had risen into a higher region, and the beat of his wing in it is stronger now and nobler than before. Again he renews his attempt to shape his thought, and he almost succeeds. ** She met me, stranger, upon life's rough way " — so he begins, and the series of similes with which he indicates that glory of the Being of beauty which shines through Emilia's mortal shape — ended by a rapid rush of metaphors, here at last linked together with some unity by his spiritual passion — is a splendid series, containing xxxvi EPIPSYCHIDIOK two magnificent descriptions of aspects of the sky, thrown off in the quick rush of verse for mere enrichment of his thought. The whole passage has the quality of great music, and its fault, if I may call it a fault, is that it is done in the manner of music, and the manner of music is not the manner of poetry. Yet the higher he soars, and the more noble his flight (and this is extremely characteristic of Shelley as an artist), the more he feels that he is not master of his own passion ; that he cannot grasp the fiery bird of his own thought and bid it stay for definition. He cries at the end — Ah ! woe is me ! What have I dared 1 Where am I lifted 1 How Shall I descend and perish not 1 " And this, which I have described, applies not only to this beginning, but to the whole poem. Even after the extraordinary ease, rapidity, and sustained loveliness of the last part, after its noble and breathless climax, he feels that he has not realised his conception, is most conscious of his weakness when he is most master of his power. " Woe is me " — he takes up the phrase again — " The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare Universe Are chains of lead around its flight of fire — I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! " INTRODUCTION. xxxvii Yes, thi^ is one of the marks of the man, and well he knew it. "His head was bound with pansies overblown." * It is easy to heap critical blame on Shelley for this.- Any fool is capable of that, and many have had that capability. But if we could take away this weakness we should not have SheUey any longer, but some one else, and the dis- tinction he has among the poets would be lost. For to * It may be that I have dwelt a little too much on this confession of weakness, and I certainly should not have done so if it 'had occurred only in this poem, which is not only personal but philo- sophical. But it appears again and again in poems which are wholly personal — at the end of the Ode to the West Windy in the portrait he draws of himself in the Adonais. Want of power to keep the heights he could gain was felt by Shelley himself to be one of his characteristics. Otherwise, I should have not made so much of it in this place ; because this swooning as it were of the mind when it is brougnt face to face with absolute Beauty, and is therefore thrilled with the absolute Love, is common to all the mediaeval poets who wrote about Love, and is described by them literally and allegorically. Even in the Convito, which Shelley may have had in his memory, and where Dante, in his later years, wrote distinctly of his Lady as signifying Philosophy— the most beautiful and excellent daughter of the Kuler of the Universe — we find the Poet making the same confession as Shelley made. He describes at the end of the third chapter of the third Treatise how powerless language is to express what the intellect (intelletto) sees. " E dico che li miei pensieri, che sono parlar d'amore, sono di lei ; che la mia anima, cio6 1 mio afFetto, arde di potere ci6 con la lingua narrare. E perchfe dire nol posso, dico che I'anima se ne lamenta dicendo : * Lassa^ chHo non son possente.^ E questa 6 I'altra ineffabilitii ; cioe, che la lingua non 6 di quello che lo'ntelletto vede compiuta- mente seguace." This only corresponds with that failure of wordf, of which Shelley speaks, to express Thought. But Dante's mind was too mighty to lose iU power over itself. It is only at the sight of the eternal light of Deity — only aft«r he has drawn nearer to expression of the ineffable than we can conceive possible to man, tliat he cries ** Air alta fantasia qui manco possa 1 " xxxviii EPIPSYCHIDION. take away the weakness would be to take away also the powers of which the weakness was an extreme. He fell exhausted, but it was because he soared so high; he trembled like a leaf, but it was because he was of such a nature that he could feel the more delicate secrets of the Universe. And the question to ask is not — "Why was he so weak ? " but — " Is there any other poet who could soar in this skylark fashion, and into these fine ethereal regions ? " and " Is it possible to soar into them in any other way ? " There are tenderer regions no doubt than these, wiser also, and more practical regions — more practical for comfort and teaching to men, for sweet and help- ful thought, for feeling that inspires and heals — higher regions where the more majestic imaginations dwell, like the gods, in valleys of calm and joy — and into these Shelley did not soar. But his nature did not take him there. Where his nature did take him was a region into which no one else takes us, and where it is well we should sometimes travel — or, if it be said it is not well, where a good number of us wish to be taken. There is no one else but Shelley to bring us into that far dim country. This is a part of his distinctiveness and his distinction ; and it is a great thing for us. And the solemn persons who do not wish to come, but stay only among the other regions of poetry, need not grudge us our charioteer, nor our course in the aether with him. IKTRODUCTION. XXXIX Next, I wish to draw attention to another poetic power Shelley possessed, and which is well illustrated in the Epipsychidion. It is his power of realising and de- scribing landscapes which are wholly ideal. They do not belong to Nature, nor do they imitate her. They are no more records of what has been actually seen with the eyes than are the landscapes of Bume-Jones. Like him, Shelley invented his landscape for his subject, and it is intended to be remote from reality. When, describing how the voice of the spirit of Beauty came to him in solitudes, he speaks ef the fountains and the odours of flowers, the breeze and the rain, he does what another man could do. But when he creates the country of the following lines, which is dreamland, and yet which we see and feel, he does what no other poet but Shelley has ever done. He meets the spirit of Beauty ** In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps ; — on an imagined shore, Under the grey beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory That I beheld her not" How unlike Nature — yet how clear! How ethereal, yet how vivid in his imagination ! It is indefinite yet definite enough to see. And where it is most definite — xl EPIPSYCHIDION. " under the grey beak of some promontory " — it is made most ideal by the supernatural touch at the end, which transfers the whole to the region of the finest-woven thought, — "robed in such exceeding glory that I beheld her not" — a phrase which throws its ideality back on all that has preceded it, and makes the landscape even more ethereal. Still more out of the world does his description become when he pictures himself as leaving this imagined land, and springing, " sandalled with plumes of fire," into pure space to find his ideal. Yet, though he is in an unseen, unimagined void, the vision that he sees is definite. He beholds himself flitting here and there, and then — " Slie, wliom prayers or tears then could not tame, Past, like a God throned on a winged planet, Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, Into the dreary cone of our life's shade." What impersonation ! Clearness of vision midst of the visionary ! And now a new imagery comes into the poem. The whole landscape changes to fit a new mood of mind. Unity of impression is neglected for the sake of incessant altering of the mood, and with each mood the scenery alters. He has seen a momentary vision of the perfect Beauty, but has been unable to pursue it. The whole universe mocks his endeavour, and he _goe§ _ jnto _the INTEODUCTIOK xli wintry forest which represents life after youth's ide: has been broken. Another poet would not have carried further the metaphor of the forest. Shelley, on the contrary, invents a whole scenery for the wood ; realises it, as if it were an actual forest. It is a thorny place, through which he stumbles, and great trees fill it and grow on the grey earth. Strange plants and strange beasts are in it, and untaught foresters. It is there he meets by a well, under nightshade bowers, the image of sensual love. When he is deceived by his first hope, and stays his footsteps, he seems changed into a deer hunted by his own thoughts.^ On the path, then, one stands like the Moon descended to Endymion, and leads him into a deep cave in the wild place, where he falls asleep; and Death and Life flit through the cave, like wingless boys, crying " Away, he is not of our crew " — that is, not of the life nor of the death which rule the actual world. At last, he is awaked from sleep, from a sleep which is a sleep in a dream, and which, in the dream, has its own dreams, by Emily coming through the wood which springs into life before her, passing from naked winter to soft summer. The imagery then changes again, and be paints himself as a great earth, a world of love, with fruits and flowers, > He repeats the thought in the Adonais; — ** And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, like raging hounds, t^eir father and theii' prey.** / m EPIPSYCHIDIOISr. billows, mists and storms and skies, ruled by twin spheres of light, by moon and sun, by Mary and by Emily — each embodying for him phases and powers of the Absolute Beauty. Let others also come, he cries, and add their powers, and be other shapes of Beauty whom also I may love. We read all this vaguely, and with vague pleasure. It is too changing, too indefinite in thought to give a high intellectual pleasure, and it is too far removed into a world of fancy to awaken personal passion, or to interest us by its emotion. But the curious thing is, that if we try to see the landscape or the images that move through it^ — both landscape and images, though they are only symbolic, are really definite. The places can be seen, described — could be painted. Shelley has looked upon them, and put down clearly what he saw. This is creation, and a kind of it which we do not meet in the work of other poets. We may call it useless, but it gives us pleasure. We also see it as Shelley saw it. But if there had been more passion in it, if the thought desired to be expressed had been more intense in Shelley's mind, the creation would have been still clearer — would not have been so mixed with foreign matter. The symbols used would not then change so often, the vision would be more at unity with* itself. Our pleasure would not be so mingled, nor should we be forced to give so much study to disentangle a web of emotion and thought and memory, which, when we INTRODUCTION. xliu have disentangled it, does not quite seem as if it were worth the trouble which we take. But now matters change. The imagination in Shelley has been warmed by the work it has done, even though that work is inferior. He has also got rid of confusion, of side issues, of memories he thought right to introduce, of things he thought it best to conciliate. One thought alone remains now. It has emerged clear from all the rest and is their mistress. The moment Shelley grasps it and isolates it vividly, his imagination rushes into it alone ; all his emotion collects around it, and the rest of the poem is as luminous as the previous part is obscure. It is with Shelley as with all artists who are worthy of the name — as emotion deepens clearness deepens. " The day is come and thou wilt fly with me ** begins the close. Shelley is alone — Mary, Emilia, all passed away — with the living image of his own soul in perfect peace, with his being of absolute Beauty. A splendid passage about love^ closely knit, the metaphors hand in hand, introduces the new theme of his flight to the island with her who is the soul out of his soul. And then we possess the creation of the island of imagination, of himself as Love, of Emily as absolute Beauty, of their life with one another in absolute joy, of their imperishable union in passion. This is the vision to which all the rest has led. It is clear, simple, astonishingly brigjjt in the sunlight of ^/ xUv EPIPSYCHIDION. thought, in the sunlight of feeling. It is realised to the smallest detail. The landscape is luminous, set in pellucid air, and is wholly at unity with itself. Every touch increases the impression, and I think it is the most beautiful thing — for pure beauty — which exists in English poetry. It is not sublime, it is not on the highest range of poetry, it is not of that primal emotion which redeems the heart from the world, but it is of an exquisite and solitary. loveliness. And it runs without a break in its beauty to a noble end, to a perfect climax — to that fine and spiritual reality of passion, which is, when it is pure of self, the last summit of human joy and peace to which we attain in life. ; NOTES. The title of this Poem — Epi;psycJiidion — is translated by Shelley himself in the line, "Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;^ and the word Epvpsychidion is coined by him to express the idea of that line. It might mean something which is placed on a soul as if to complete or crown it. It was probably intended by Shelley to be also a diminutive of endearment from epipsyche. There is no such Greek word as cTn'yjrvxn- ^^t epipsyche would mean "a soul upon a soul," just as epicycle, in the Ptolemaic astronomy, meant '* a circle upon a circle." Such " a soul on a soul " might be paraphrased as a soul which is the complement of, and therefore responsive to, another soul like itself, but in higher place and of a higher order. The lower would then seek to be united with the higher, because in such xlvi EPIPSYCHIDION. union it would be made perfect, and the pre-established harmony between them be actually realised. This idea, many suggestions of which may be found in Plato, runs through a great part of Shelley's personal 5 poetry, and the accomplishment of it is expressed near the end of JEjpi^sychidion in the lines which begin " One passion in two hearts." But perhaps the best commentary on the whole of this conception is the passage which I here extract from / These words are ineffectual and metaphorical Most words ore so. No help f xlviii EPIPSYCHIBION. portion as the type within demands ; this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends ; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which $ there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathise not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the waters and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring fo in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits i{ to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or pi power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was." The main motive of the Poem is again taken up and illustrated with different colouring and imagery in the >^ fable, Una Favola, of which Mr. Gamett made an ex- NOTES. xlix cellent translation in his Relics of Shelley. That fable is dated 1820, but I should be inclined to conjecture from its peculiar note, and from its being written in Italian, that it was composed after Shelley's meeting with Emilia Viviani. At any rate, many of its images and expressions are re- peated in Upipsychidion with natural differences. The obscure forest of Life, the allurement of Death, when despair falls on desire and Love has fled ; the false images of Love ; the rapture at meeting, after long seeking, with the unveiled reality of her who had always been veiled — these are all in Epipsychidion ; nor are there wanting in the FoLble certain analogies to Alastor. Here is the fable in Mr. Gamett's translation : — "There was a youth who travelled through distant lands, seeking throughout the world a lady of whom he was enamoured. And who this lady was, and how this youth became enamoured of her, and how and why the great love he bore her forsook him, are things worthy to be known by every gentle heart. "At the dawn of the fifteenth spring of his life, a certain one calling himself Love awoke him, saying that one whom he had ofttimes beheld in his dreams abode awaiting him. This Love was accompanied by a great troop of female forms, all veiled in white, and crowned with laurel, ivy, and myrtle, garlanded and interwreathed with violets, roses, and lilies. They sang with such sweetness that perhaps the harmony of the spheres, to 9 1 EPIPSYCHIBION. which the stars dance, is not so sweet. And their manners and words were so alluring that the youth was enticed, and, arising from his couch, made himself ready to do all the pleasure of him who called himself Love; at whose behest he followed him by lonely ways and deserts and caverns, until the whole troop arrived at a solitary wood, in a gloomy valley between two most lofty mountains, which valley was planted in the manner of a labyrinth, with pines, cypresses, cedars, and yews, whose shadows begot a mixture of delight and sadness. And in this wood the youth for a whole year followed the uncertain footsteps of this his companion and guide, as the moon follows the earth, save that there was no change in him, and nourished by the fruit of a certain tree which grew in the midst of the labyrinth — a food sweet and bitter at once, which being cold as ice to the lips, appeared fire in the veins. The veiled figures were continually around him, ministers and attendants obedient to his least gesture, and messengers between him and Love, when Love might leave him for a little on his other errands. But these figures, albeit executing his every other command with swiftness, never would unveil themselves to him, although he anxiously besought them ; one only excepted, whose name was Life, and who had the fame of a potent enchantress. She was tall of person and beautiful, cheerful and easy in her manners, and richly adorned, and, as it seemed from her ready unveiling of herself, she wished well to this youth. KOTES. li But he soon perceived that she was more false than any Siren, for by her counsel Love abandoned him in this savage place, with only the company of these shrouded figures, who, by their obstinately remaining veiled, had klways wrought him dread. And none can expound whether these figures were the spectres of his own dead thoughts, or the shadows of the. living thoughts of Love. Then Life, haply ashamed of her deceit, concealed herself within the cavern of a certain sister of hers dwelling there ; and Love, sighing, returned to his third heaven. " Scarcely had Love departed, when the masked forms, released from his government, unveiled themselves before the astonished youth. And for many days these figures danced around him whithersoever he went, alternately mocking and threatening him ; and in the night while he reposed they defiled in long and slow procession before his couch, each more hideous and terrible than the other. Their horrible aspect and loathsome figure so overcame his heart with sadness that the fair heaven, covered with that shadow, clothed itself in clouds before his eyes ; and he wept so much that the herbs upon his path, fed with tears instead of dew, became pale and bowed like himself. Weary at length of this suffering, he came to the grot of the Sister of Life, herself also an enchantress, and found her sitting before a pale fire of perfumed wood, singing laments sweet in their melancholy, and weaving a white shroud, upon which his name was half wrought, with the lii EPIPSYCHIDION. obscure and imperfect beginning of a certain other name ; and he besought her to tell him her own, and she said, with a faint but sweet voice, 'Death/ And the youth said, * O lovely Death, I pray thee to aid me against these hateful phantoms, companions of thy sister, which cease not to torment me.' And Death comforted him, and took his hand with a smile, and kissed his brow and cheek, so that every vein thrilled with joy and fear, and made him abide with her in a chamber of her cavern, whither, she said, it was against Destiny that the wicked companions of Life should ever come. The youth continually conversing with Death, and she, like-minded to a sister, caressing him and showing him every courtesy both in deed and word, he quickly became enamoured of her, and Life herself, far less any of her troop, seemed fair to him no longer ; and his passion so overcame him that upon his knees he prayed Death to love him as he loved her, and consent to do his pleasure. But Death said, ' Audacious that thou art, with whose desire has Death ever complied ? If thou lovedst me not, perchance I might love thee — beloved by thee, I hate thee and I fly thee.' Thus saying, she went forth from the cavern, and her dusky and^ethereal form was soon lost amid the interwoven boughs of the forest. **From that moment the youth pursued the track of Death ; and so mighty was the love that led him that he had encircled the world and searched through all its regions, and many years were already spent, but sorrows NOTES. liii rather than years had blanched his locks and withered the flower of his beauty, when he found himself upon the confines of the very forest from which his wretched wanderings had begun. He cast himself upon the grass and wept for many hours, so blinded by his tears that for much time he did not perceive that not all that bathed his face and his bosom were his own, but that a lady bowed behind him wept for pity of his weeping. And lifting up his eyes he saw her, and it seemed to him never to have beheld so glorious a vision, and he doubted much whether she were a human creature. And his love of Death was suddenly changed into hate and suspicion, for this new love was so potent that it overcame every other thought. This compassionate lady at first loved him for mere pity ; but love grew up swiftly with com- passion, and she loved for Love's own sake, no one beloved by her having need of pity any more. This was the lady in whose quest Love had led the youth through that gloomy labyrinth of error and suffering, haply for that he esteemed him unworthy of so much glory, and perceived him too weak to support such exceeding joy. After having somewhat dried their tears, the twain walked together in that same forest, until Death stood before them, and said, ' Whilst, O youth, thou didst love me, I hated thee, and now that thou hatest me, I love thee, and wish so well to thee and thy bride that in my kingdom, which thou mayest call Paradise, I have set apart a chosen spot, where liv EPIPSYCHIDION. ye may securely fulfil your happy leves/ And the lady, offended, and perchance somewhat jealous by reason of the past love of her spouse, turned her back upon Death, saying within herself, ' What would this lover of my husband who comes here to trouble us ? * and cried, * Life ! Life ! ' and Life came, with a gay visage, crowned with a rainbow, and clad in a various mantle of chameleon skin ; and Death went away weeping, and departing said with a sweet voice, ' Ye mistrust me, but I forgive ye, and await ye where ye needs must come, for I dwell with Love and Eternity, with whom the souls whose love is everlast- ing must hold communion ; then will ye perceive whether I have deserved your distrust. Meanwhile I commend ye to Life ; and, sister mine, I beseech thee, by the love of that Death with whom thou wert twin born, not to employ thy customary arts against these lovers, but content thee with the tribute thou hast already received of sighs and tears, which are thy wealth/ The youth, mindful of how great evil she had wrought him in that wood, mistrusted Life ; but the lady, although she doubted, yet being jealous of Death, ..." There are several passages in Shelley's poems which illustrate the conceptions of Love and Beauty embodied in Ujpijpsychidion. Rather than comment on them in my NOTES. Iv own words, I place them here together, and each reader can collate them in his own mind, as he pleases. " The grass in the warm sun did start and move, The sea-buds burst beneath the waves serene ; How many a one, though none be near to love, " Loves then the shade of his own soul, half-seen In any mirror — or the spring's young minions The winged leaves amid the copses green." " Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all "We can desire, Love ! and happy souls, Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall, " Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew ; — Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls " Investest it ; and when the heavens are blue Thou fiUest them ; and when the earth is fair The shadow of thy moving wings imbue " Its desarts and its mountains, till they wear Beauty like some bright robe ; — thou ever soarest Among the towers of men, and as soft air " In spring, which moves the unawakened forest, Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak, Thou floatest among men ; and aye implorest " That which from thee they should implore : — the weak Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts The strong have broken— yet where shall any seek " A garment whom thou clothest not P '* — Prince Athanase. s^S Ivi EPIPSYCHIDION. " I loved — oil no ! I mean not one of ye, Or any earthly one, though ye are dear As human heart to human heart may be ; I loved, I know not what. But this low sphere. And all that it contains, contains not thee, — Thou, whom seen nowhere, I feel everywhere. From heaven and earth, and all that in them are, Veiled art thou, like a (storm benighted ?) star " By heaven and earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden ; Making divine the loftiest and the lowest. When for a moment thou art not forbidden To live within the life which thou bestowest ; And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden. Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight. Blank as the sun after the birth of night. " In winds and trees and streams, and all things common ; In music, and the sweet unconscious tone Of animals, and voices which are human, Meant to express some feelings of their own ; In the soft motions and rare smile of woman ; In flowers and leaves ; and in the grass fresh-shown, Or dying in the autumn ; I the most Adore thee present, or lament thee lost." — The Zucca. The parallel passages in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty I have already spoken of. But there is a differ- ence in one point between the. two poems. The spells he speaks of in the Hymn bring before him the shadow of Beauty. The spells he muimurs in EpipsycJiidion are used to recover the sight of the shadow of her whom he has lost. NOTES. Ivu There is also a difference between Alastor and Fpipsy- chidion. The passionate union of his soul to the spirit of Beauty is realised in Alastor at the beginning of his life, but only realised in dream ; and in the agony of the desire a- wakened by this dream he roams over the world, seeking her in vain, and dies. In E'pipsychidioriy the search reaches its goal, the dream is realised — union is accomplished at the end of the poem. But it is only accomplished in imagina- tion. He has not yet fled with Emily. But nevertheless it is realised in hope ; it is before him, not behind him AS it is in Alastor. Despair has departed from the poet. He looks to life, not death. And though the poem ends with a cry of failure, yet the epilogue is quiet and firm. " I am Love's," he says at the very close. Nor is he, like the poet in Alastor, alone, slain by his^ self- chosen isolation. He is in Epipsychidion at one with others. " Marina, Vanna, Primus and the rest " are with him. The spirit of the later is wholly different from that of the earlier poem. Nevertheless, even here, Shelley is, as I have said, con- scious of the weakness of his overwrought imagination, and no one should omit to compare the lines at the end, beginning " Woe is me," with the extraordinary revelation of his own character in the Adonais, every line of which is weighty with self-knowledge, and the whole of which supplies the best basis for the criticism of that part of his life and poetry which was only personal. \^ Iviii EPIPSYCHIDION. XXXI. " Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, A phantom among men ; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, P!lrsued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. XXXII. " A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift — A Love in desolation masked ; — a Power Girt round with weakness ; — it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour ; It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow ; — even whilst we speak Is it not broken ? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly ; on a cheek Ihe life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. XXXIII. " His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew, Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew He caine the last, neglected and apart ; A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.* NOTES. lix Lastly, I insert in the original the final verse of the first Canzone of Dante's Convito, Shelley's translation of which is placed as a Preface to Epijpsychidion : ** Canzone, io credo che saranno radi Color che tua ragione intendan bene, Tanto lor parli faticoso e forte ;-~ Onde, se per ventura egli addiviene, Che tu dinanzi da persone vadi, Che non ti pajan d'essa bene accorte ; Allor ti priego che ti riconforte, Dicendo lor, diletta mia novella : Ponete mente almen, com'io son bella." Stopford a. Brooke. NOTE ON EPIPSYCHIDION ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE NOTE ON EPIPSYCHIDION BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE There is but one point on which the Epipsychidion might be plausibly represented as open to attack. Its impalpable and ethereal philosophy of love and life does not prevent it from being " quite a justifiable sort of poem to write ; '* the questionable element in it is the apparent introduction of such merely personal allusions as can only perplex and irritate the patience and intelligence of a loyal student, while they may not impossibly afford an opening for preposterous and even offensive interpretations. In all poetry as in all religions, mysteries must have place, but riddles should find none. The high, sweet, mystic doctrine of this poem is apprehensible enough to all who look into it with purged eyes and listen with purged ears; but the passages in which the special experience of the writer bdv NOTE ON EPIPSYCHIDION is thrust forward under the mask and muffler of allegoric rhapsody are not in any proper sense mysterious; they are simply puzzling ; and art should have nothing to do with puzzles. This, and this alone, is the fault which in my opinion may be not unreasonably found with some few passages of the Epipsychidion ; and a fault so slight and partial as merely to a^ffect some few passages here and there, perceptible only in the bjrways and outskirts of the poem, can in no degree impair the divine perfection of its charm, the savour of its heavenly quality. By the depth and exaltation of its dominant idea, by the rapture of the music and the glory of the colour which clothe with sound and splendour the subtle and luminous body of its thought, by th« harmony of its most passionate notes and the humanity of its most godlike raptures, it holds a foremost place in the works of that poet who has now for two generations ruled and moulded the hearts and minds of all among his countrymen to whom the love of poetry has been more than a fancy or a fashion; who has led them by the light of his faith, by the spell of his hope, by the fire of his love, on the way of thought which he himself had followed in the track of the greatest who had gone before him — of ^Eschylus, of Lucretius, of Milton ; who has been more to us than ever was Byron to the youth of his own brief day, than ever was Wordsworth to the students of the day succeeding; and of whom, NOTE ON EPIPSYCHIDION. Ixv whether we class him as second or as third among English poets, it must be in either case conceded that he holds the same rank in lyric as Shakespeare in dramatic poetry — supreme, and without a second of his race. I would not pit his name against the sacred name of IVIilton ; to wrangle for the precedence of this immortal or of that / can be but futile and injurious ; it is enough that our country may count among her sons two of the gTeatest among those great poets who have been prophets and evangelists of personal and national, social and spiritual freedom ; but it is equally certain that of all forms or kinds of poetry the two highest are the lyric and the dramatic, and that as clearly as the first place in the one rank is held among us by Shakespeare, the first place in the other is held and will never be resigned by Shelley. [From Essays and Stvdus, 1875, pp. 236-237.] If any man of human ear can want further evidence than his own sense of harmony in suppoi*t of the true and hitherto undisputed reading (of the line, " Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,'* in Shelley's Lament) ^ he may find one instance among others of the subtle and wonderful us^io which Shelley would some- times put a seeming imperfection of this kind in the verses to Emilia Viviani : " Is it with thy kisses or thy tears T " Ixvi NOTE ON EPIPSYCHIDION. Here the same ineffable effect of indefinable sweetness is produced by an exact repetition (but let no aspiring "poet-ape" ever think to reproduce it by imitation) of the same simple means — the suppression, namely, of a single syllable. And I cannot but wonder as well as rejoice that no pedant whose ears are at the end of his fingers should ever yet have proposed to correct and complete the verse by reading **Say, is it with thy kisses," &c. A. C. Swinburne. [From Essays and Studies, 1876, pp. 229-230.] EPIPSYCHIDION Pricc^ 2s. LONDON. PRINTED BY S. AND R. BBNTLEY, DORSET-STREET, SALI8BURY-SQUARK EPIPSYCHIDION VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY EMILIA Y- NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF L' anima amante si slaucia fuori del create, e si crea nel infinito un Hondo tutto per essa, diverse assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. Her own words. LONDON C AND J OLLIER VERE STREET BOND STREET MDCCCXXI. ADVERTISEMENT The Writer of the following Lines died^t Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular ; less on account of the romantic vicissi- tudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circum- stances to which it relates ; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that, gran vergo'jna sarebbe a colui, die rimasse coaa sotto veste difigu- raj o di colore rettorico : e domandato non sapesse denvdare le atie parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avesaero verace intendimento. The present poem appears to have been intended by the Wri- ter as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page is almost a literal translation from Dante's famous Canzone Vol, eh* intendendOy il terzo ciel movete, dse. The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend : be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. a J}o /