iven."

A year later he was drowned.

While the beauty of Adonais is easily appreciated, 'Epipsychidion',
written in the same year, must strike many readers as mere moonshine
and madness. In 'Alastor', the poet, at the opening of his career, had
pursued in vain through the wilderness of the world a vision of ideal
loveliness; it would now seem that this vision is at last embodied in
"the noble and unfortunate Lady Emilia Viviani," to whom 'Epipsychidion'
is addressed. Shelley begins by exhausting, in the effort to express her
perfection, all the metaphors that rapture can suggest. He calls her
his adored nightingale, a spirit-winged heart, a seraph of heaven, sweet
benediction in the eternal curse, moon beyond the clouds, star above
the storm, "thou Wonder and thou Beauty and thou Terror! Thou Harmony
of Nature's art!" She is a sweet lamp, a "well of sealed and secret
happiness," a star, a tone, a light, a solitude, a refuge, a delight, a
lute, a buried treasure, a cradle, a violet-shaded grave, an antelope,
a moon shining through a mist of dew. But all his "world of fancies" is
unequal to express her; he breaks off in despair. A calmer passage of
great interest then explains his philosophy of love:

"That best philosophy, whose taste
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom,"

and tells how he "never was attached to that great sect," which requires
that everyone should bind himself for life to one mistress or friend;
for the secret of true love is that it is increased, not diminished, by
division; like imagination, it fills the universe; the parts exceed the
whole, and this is the great characteristic distinguishing all things
good from all things evil. We then have a shadowy record of love's
dealings with him. In childhood he clasped the vision in every natural
sight and sound, in verse, and in philosophy. Then it fled, this "soul
out of my soul." He goes into the wintry forest of life, where "one
whose voice was venomed melody" entraps and poisons his youth. The ideal
is sought in vain in many mortal shapes, until the moon rises on him,
"the cold chaste Moon," smiling on his soul, which lies in a death-like
trance, a frozen ocean. At last the long-sought vision comes into the
wintry forest; it is Emily, like the sun, bringing light and odour and
new life. Henceforth he is a world ruled by and rejoicing in these twin
spheres. "As to real flesh and blood," he said in