first dawn of consciousness he challenged and defied the
works and ways of men and the apparent order of the universe. Never for
a moment anywhere was he at home in the world. There was nothing
attainable he cared to pursue, nothing actual he cared to represent. He
could no more see what is called fact than he could act upon it. His
eyes were dazzled by a different vision. Life and the world not only are
intolerable to him, they are unreal. Beyond and behind lies Reality, and
it is good. Now it is a Perfectibility lying in the future; now a
Perfection existing eternally. In any case, whatever it be, however and
wherever to be found, it is the sole object of his quest and of his
song. Whatever of good or lovely or passionate gleams here and there, on
the surface or in the depths of the actual, is a ray of that Sun, an
image of that Beauty. His imagination is kindled by Appearance only to
soar away from it. The landscape he depicts is all light, all fountains
and caverns. The Beings with which it is peopled are discarnate Joys and
Hopes; Justice and Liberty, Peace and Love and Truth. Among these only
is he at home; in the world of men he is an alien captive; and Human
Life presents itself as an "unquiet dream."

"'Tis we that, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings."

When we die, we awake into Reality--that Reality to which, from the
beginning, Shelley was consecrated:

"I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine--have I not kept my vow?"

He calls it "intellectual Beauty"; he impersonates it as Asia, and sings
it in verse that passes beyond sense into music:

"Life of Life! thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.

Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.

Fair are others; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour,
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for