en thou art far;
As twilight to the sphered moon,
As sunset to the evening star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.
[Footnote: _To Mary_.]

Perhaps it is unworthy quibbling to object that the figure here suggests
too strongly Shelley's consciousness of the merely atmospheric function
of Mary, in enhancing his own personality, as contrasted with the
radiant divinity of Emilia Viviani, to whom he ascribes his
creativeness. [Footnote: Compare Wordsworth, _She Was a Phantom of
Delight_, _Dearer Far than Life_; Tennyson, _Dedication of
Enoch Arden_.]

It is customary for our bards gallantly to explain that the completeness
of their domestic happiness leaves them no lurking discontent to spur
them onto verse writing. This is the conclusion of the happily wedded
heroes of Bayard Taylor's _A Poet's Journal_, and of Coventry
Patmore's _The Angel in the House_; likewise of the poet in J. G.
Holland's _Kathrina_, who excuses his waning inspiration after his
marriage:

She, being all my world, had left no room
For other occupation than my love.
... I had grown enervate
In the warm atmosphere which I had breathed.

Taken as a whole, the evidence is decidedly in favor of the remote love,
prevented in some way from reaching its culmination. To requote Alfred
Noyes, the poet knows that ideal love must be

Far off, beyond me, otherwise no star.
[Footnote: Marlowe.]

In _Sister Songs_ Francis Thompson asserts that such remoteness is
essential to his genius:

I deem well why life unshared
Was ordained me of yore.
In pairing time, we know, the bird
Kindles to its deepmost splendour,
And the tender
Voice is tenderest in its throat.
Were its love, forever by it,
Never nigh it,
It might keep a vernal note,
The crocean and amethystine
In their pristine
Lustre linger on its coat.
[Footnote: Possibly this is characteristic only of the male singer.
Christina Rossetti expresses the opposite attitude in _Monna Innominata_
XIV, mourning for

The silence of a heart that sang its songs
When youth and beauty made a summer morn,
Silence of love that cannot sing again.]

Byron, in the _Lament of Tasso_, causes that famous lover likewise
to maintain that distance is necessary to idealization. He sighs,

Successful love may sate itself away.
The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate
To have all feeling save the one decay,
And every passion into one dilate,
As rapid rivers