E. A. SILSBEE'S REMARKS. 19 



showing too how rhetoric may be married to verse when 

 the man is great enough : 



" Come, and compare 

 Column or idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek, 

 With Nature's realms of worship, earth or air, 

 Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy pray'r." 



And again : 



" And not a breath crept through the rosy air, 

 And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer." 



Shelley with his pale fire leads the way like a disem- 

 bodied soul as he is fleeing through space, fleeting through 

 verse as the wind sighs through Eolian harps, or wanders 

 over the sea engraving it with an emotion like its own, 

 as tremulous, as vast ; susceptible like a spirit, possessed 

 with divine fire and frenzy of love ; most sensitive, above 

 all writers gifted with sympathetic versification, which*Is 

 his own ; the organ of modern times, its one note of 

 sensibility ; meeting nature in her fastnesses, and explor- 

 ing the human intellect through and through, haunting it. 



O ~ ~ * O 



The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," Nature has woven it 

 about herself as the worm buries itself in its own cocoon 

 till it is lost from sight. The elements themselves write 

 for Shelley; and every emotion lends its aid, and flying 

 impulse, and craving momentary vein. He is subtle and 

 natural. 



No poet has such lyrical fire in our tongue, soul all 

 aflame ; he takes hold of us vitally. All young men now- 

 in this emancipated era, growing on to meet Shelley, wor- 

 ship him. Who combines intellectuality and sensibility 

 like him, voice as he is of progress, poet forever of en- 

 chanting melancholy, poetic tender melancholy, sadness 

 which is holy, the old poets touch it demurely, coquet- 

 tishly, with ravishing grace, delicacy, penetration? 

 Honor to the English race ! showing how wide they are, 



