My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak. I sat and saw the vessels glide Over the ocean bright and wide, 25 30 Like spirit-wingèd chariots sent For ministrations strange and far; 35 As if to some Elysian star Such sweet and bitter pain as mine. Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day, And spear about the low rocks damp Too happy they, whose pleasure sought Of the regret that pleasure leaves, A DIRGE. ROUGH wind, that moanest loud Sad storm, whose tears are vain, 1822. EPITAPH. THESE are two friends whose lives were undivided; 1822. ALASTOR. THE circumstances in which this poem was written serve to throw light upon its meaning. Already at twenty-three Shelley was disillusioned of some eager and exorbitant hopes; the first great experiment of his heart had proved a failure; his boyish ardour for the enfranchisement of a people had been without result; his literary efforts had met with little sympathy or recognition; and, during the early months of the year, he had felt how frail was his hold on life, and had almost confronted that mystery which lies behind the veil of mortal existence" (Dowden's Life, Vol. I, p. 530). "In the spring of 1815," says Mrs. Shelley in her note on this poem, “an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption." The mood reflected in Alastor is the mood in which Shelley regarded his own past, with death staring him in the face. As he looks back on his life, he notes especially its isolation and apparent fruitlessness. He feels that he has been a creature alone and apart, pursuing aims which the mass of men do not understand, and thus cut off from the wholesome and stimulating sympathy of his fellows. This "selfcentred seclusion," as he explains in the Preface to the poem, is not the result of a cold or egoistic nature; he does not belong to the class described in the second paragraph of the Preface. His isolation is caused by the loftiness of his ideal and by his perfect devotion to it. He neglected attainable but imperfect good for the sake of ideal perfections, which forever escape his grasp. One form of this devotion to the ideal is the desire for complete sympathy of mind and feeling, such as would be afforded by a woman in perfect harmony with his own highest self; it is this aspect of his eager but vain quest which is made especially prominent in Alastor. These experiences, then, of Shelley's spiritual life and this mood in which he regards them, form the substance of the poem; the poet does not, however, describe these things directly: he symbolizes them in • the wanderings of an imaginary hero, and the intangible feelings and experiences of which we have spoken are concretely shadowed forth in descriptions of scenery. But these descriptions do not stand in the poem solely on account of their symbolic import; the poet delights in them for their own sake, and so will the appreciative reader. To follow the course of a stream on foot or by boat was always to Shelley a peculiarly fascinating employment. In 1814 he had "visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and returned to England from Lucerne by the Reuss and Rhine. This river-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of Thalaba his imagination had been excited by the description of such a voyage " (Mrs. Shelley's note). In the beginning of September, 1815, immediately before writing Alastor, he had followed in a wherry the course of the Thames from Windsor almost to its source. The poem itself was written at Bishopsgate, on the borders of Windsor forest, amidst whose oaks he spent a great part of his time. From the stores of natural beauty thus accumulated in his mind, he shaped the scenery of the poem. But he does not realistically reproduce what he has observed. He modifies and combines elements derived from actual nature in order to reflect his own feelings and moods. But, although the journey of the hero symbolizes Shelley's own life, and the different scenes suggest the character of its various experiences, the reader must not attempt to press the symbolism too far. Alastor is not an allegory like the first two books of the Faery Queen; each circumstance does not have a definite allegorical meaning. But, rather, the poet, in the vaguer fashion of a musical composer, suggests and stimulates certain frames of mind and feeling through the use of concrete imagery. To appreciate the poem, we must catch its varying tone and spirit, not too inquisitively search for secondary senses. The blank verse of Alastor is evidently affected by the study of Wordsworth (cf. Tintern Abbey, for example), and the influence of the elder poet is apparent also occasionally in individual phrases: "natural piety" (1. 3), "obstinate questionings" (1. 26), “too deep for tears (1.713). Southey's Thalaba, as Mrs. Shelley points out, was also a factor in the composition of Alastor, and Shelley may have read and got hints from Volney's Genie des Tombeaux.1 2 33. The lines with which the Preface closes are from Wordsworth's Excursion, Book I. Shelley misquotes; the original has “And they" not " And those.” 1 Sources, parallel passages, etc., have been collected by Dr. Ackermann and M. Beljame; see the Bibliography at end of this volume. |