If
we think that the _Cloud_ or the _West Wind_ or the _Witch of the
Atlas_ are mere fireworks, poetic dust, a sort of _bataille des
fleurs_ in which we are pelted by a shower of images--we have not
understood the passion that overflows in them, as any long-nursed
passion may, in any of us, suddenly overflow in an unwonted profusion
of words. This is a point at which Francis Thompson's understanding of
Shelley, generally so perfect, seems to me to go astray. The universe,
Thompson tells us, was Shelley's box of toys. "He gets between the
feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of patient Nature,
and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions, to
see how she will look nicest in his song." This last is not, I think,
Shelley's motive; it is not the truth about the spring of his genius.
He undoubtedly shatters the world to bits, but only to build it nearer
to the heart's desire, only to make out of its coloured fragments some
more Elysian home for love, or some more dazzling symbol for that
infinite beauty which is the need--the profound, aching, imperative
need--of the human soul. This recreative impulse of the poet's is not
wilful, as Thompson calls it: it is moral. Like the _Sensitive Plant_
"It loves even like Love,--its deep heart is full;
It desires what it has not, the beautiful.
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