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This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.1 Sept. 1818-1819. 1820.

1 The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human species was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity: God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,

"Brought death into the world and all our woe." Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all-even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph, emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a more idealised image of the same subject. He followed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated to him. According to the

THE SENSITIVE PLANT
PART FIRST

A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew. And the young winds fed it with silver dew,

And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,

And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair, mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set him free; and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles.

Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views. The son greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a happier reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures centuries of torture; till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will flow, esponses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the Oceanides, is the wife of Prometheus--she was, according to other mythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the benefactor of mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy union. In the fourth Act, the Poet gives further scope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms of creation-such as we know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth, the guide of our planet through the realms of sky; while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere.

Shelley develops more particularly in the lyrics of this drama his abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical es says on the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations and remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of Mind and Nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.

More popular poets clothe the ideal with fa miliar and sensible imagery. Shelley loved to idealize the real-to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind, Sophocles was his great master in this species of imagery.-(From Mrs. Shelley's note.)

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Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;

You might hear by the heaving of her breast,

That the coming and going of the wind Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.

And wherever her airy footstep trod,
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy

sweep,

Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep.

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet

Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; I doubt not they felt the spirit that came From her glowing fingers thro' all their frame.

She sprinkled bright water from the stream

On those that were faint with the sunny beam;

And out of the cups of the heavy flowers She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.

She lifted their heads with her tender hands,

And sustained them with rods and osier bands;

If the flowers had been her own infants she

Could never have nursed them more tenderly.

And all killing insects and gnawing worms,

And things of obscene and unlovely forms,

She bore in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,

In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full,

The freshest her gentle hands could pull For the poor banished insects, whose intent,

Although they did ill, was innocent.

But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss

The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she

Make her attendant angels be.

And many an antenatal tomb,
Where butterflies dream of the life to

come,

She left clinging round the smooth and dark

Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

This fairest creature from earliest spring Thus moved through the garden ministering

All the sweet season of summer tide, And ere the first leaf looked brown-she died!

PART THIRD

Three days the flowers of the garden fair, Like stars when the moon is awakened,

were,

Or the waves of Baiæ, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of
Vesuvius.

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant Felt the sound of the funeral chant, And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,

And the sobs of the mourners deep and low;

The weary sound and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,

Sent through the pores of the coffin plank;

The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,

Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;

From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,

And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.

The garden once fair, became cold and foul,

Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,

Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap To make men tremble who never weep.

Swift summer into the autumn flowed, And frost in the mist of the morning rode,

Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,

Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,

Paved the turf and the moss below.
The lilies were drooping, and white, and

wan,

Like the head and the skin of a dying

man.

And Indian plants, of scent and hue The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, Leaf by leaf, day after day,

Were massed into the common clay.

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,

And white with the whiteness of what is dead,

Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past;

Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,

Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds, Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem,

Which rotted into the earth with them.

The water-blooms under the rivulet Fell from the stalks on which they were set;

And the eddies drove them here and there,

As the winds did those of the upper air.

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks,

Were bent and tangled across the walks; And the leafless network of parasite

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