"To suffer ...
To forgive ...
To defy Power ...
To love and bear; to hope, till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This ... is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free."
Shelley was also removed from any ordinary atheism by his truly
speculative sense for eternity. He was a thorough Platonist All
metaphysics perhaps is poetry, but Platonic metaphysics is good
poetry, and to this class Shelley's belongs. For instance:
"The pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same.
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep!
He hath awakened from the dream of life.
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife.
"He is made one with Nature. There is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird.
"He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely.
"The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not:
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil.
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