was the secret of the success that religion has had; it was the poetry in the chivalric system which refined the manners of the Middle Ages. Even when society is decaying, Poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps of Astraea, departing from the world. As long as there is in a nation susceptibility to poetic pleasure, that nation is not utterly corrupt.

This being the view of Shelley as to the relation between poetry and politics, we are not in the least surprised to find some very practical politics in the Witch of Atlas; and the last part of the poem is devoted to describing, with a touch of ironical humour, this aspect of the Witch's work. Her chief sport is to glide down old Nilus, from the steep of utmost Axume, by Maeris and the Mareotid lake, past the Labyrinth and the Pyramids, to the sea. These represent old civilisations, with all their triumphs of mechanical skill, and all the unmentionable horrors of their lawless laws and customary codes. Man, whose life ought to move on in a smooth stream, like the Nile over the plains of the Delta, finds himself disturbed by the hideous strife due to the distorted terrors induced by priestcraft and the wrongs of secular oppressors. We, says Shelley, must take an unpiloted and a starless course over the wild surface, to an unknown goal; but she in the calm depths. The piercing eye of Imagination can see, in the dreadful present, the promise of a glorious future; and, with something of the calm of a Spinoza or a Goethe, the philosopher can watch the agonising world move on to

her destined end. The Witch can gaze at princes enjoying their undeserved luxury, and at peasants in their huts; she can see the priests asleep, all educated into a dull and useless uniformity, and the sailors on the waves, and the dead in their eternal slumber. To her calm eyes the naked beauty of the soul lies bare. And she has a charm that robs the poverty-struck life of its sordidness, and dulls the edge of care. This is that dream-like Hope which comes to all, and keeps the world for ever young. For lack of this charm, Tithonus grew old, and withered into a grey shadow; and it was for lack of it that Adonis died despite the prayers of Venus. For what would life be without its dreams? It is they that lend romance to the most humdrum of existences, and touch the dreariest heart with a glowing ray from Infinitude. It is they that teach us the secret of Love-a secret which the Lady does not know at first, but which she will learn in time; and when she learns it, the Imagination will attain its true perfection.

As Imagination penetrates into the brains of men, they see the futility of their crimes. Elsewhere Shelley tells us that a mountain, if duly understood by Imagination, has power to repeal whole codes of fraud and wrong; and here, in other words, he says the same. Under the influence of Imagination, the miser, a new Zacchaeus, restores his gains; the lying scribe confesses his falsehoods, the priest owns that his religion was a fraud carried on for the sake of lucre. Nay, kings themselves renounce the trappings of royalty, and reveal kingship to the world as a grotesque and indecent sham.

Soldiers, once given the power to see their trade as it really is, rush forth to beat their swords into ploughshares; for war is not possible as soon as the point of view of one's opponents is grasped. For the same reason, the gaolers release from prison the liberal captives, whose attitude to life they realise; for as soon as we see that there is something to be said for a creed, we can no longer try to crush it by force. Shelley, by the way, is guilty here both of a false quantity and of a more serious inconsistency. King Amăsis, who should really be King Amāsis, is much annoyed at the release of the schismatics. But, if he had been sufficiently imaginative to dress an ape up in his crown and robes, he would not have minded a few liberals in his realm.

From political freedom we are led on to free love. True wisdom, says Shelley, would see no ill in lovers who had obeyed the impulses of Nature. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner; and complete comprehension is possible only to the imaginative mind.

Lastly, if there is anything higher than love, it is friendship. At least Sidney, Michael Angelo, and Shakspere seem to have thought so. And of all evil souls the worst is that which finds pleasure in sundering friendships; while to restore the broken union is perhaps the hardest, as it is the noblest, task in the world. "I should like," says Jean Paul, "to be present at all reconciliations; for there is no love that moves us like returning love." The task is hard indeed, but it is not beyond the power of the Witch. A determined effort to imagine oneself into the position of the other mind

136 VII IMAGINATIVE: 'THE WITCH OF ATLAS' can succeed, where all else fails. With visions clear of deep affection and of truth sincere she unites the friends

once more.

At the end of the Utopia Sir Thomas More recurs to the tone of irony which, in the enchantment of his dreams, he had for a time forgotten. "There are many things in the Republic of Nowhere which I rather wish than hope to see adopted in England." Similarly, having surveyed the work of his Witch, so noble and so exalted, Shelley recurs to the fleeting tone he had for a while discarded. These wondrous doings are pranks; this immortal benefactor of the human race is a mere eccentric; no sensible person, with comfortable things all around him, and the summer sun shedding pleasant rays upon him, can possibly believe in her existence or her doings. But it is just from such common sense that Shelley does his utmost to deliver us. The rest of the acts of the Witch, and all that she did, says he, are not to be told on these garish summer days, in which we believe scarce more than we can see-to Shelley the worst of restrictions. The full story must be reserved for a weird winter night for then the Imagination has full play. As he had already sung in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty: There is a harmony

In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard nor seen;

and those who have read and loved the Witch of Atlas will agree with the lines in Marianne's Dream:

Sleep has sights as clear and true

As any waking eyes can view.

VIII

The Plastic Stress

BSOLUTE philosophical consistency is neither to

A

be expected nor to be desired in poetry. When

poets have endeavoured to give to their works the exactitude of a Critique of Pure Reason, or even that of a Manual of Practical Farming, they have usually spoilt the poem without advancing the cause of knowledge. We read Lucretius and Wordsworth, for example, with most pleasure when they forget the didactic and allow the impulse of their genius free play; and even the Georgics is less delightful than usual when it deviates into the actual teaching of agriculture.

Nevertheless, a certain measure of philosophy is perhaps almost a necessary element in true poetry. We say this without forgetting the simple narrative charm of the Odyssey, or the captivating naïveté of several of Herrick's songs, or the claim of Morris to be regarded as but the idle singer of an empty day. All rules have their exceptions; but it may fairly be maintained that as faith without works is dead, so a poem without some touch either of solid fact or of deep speculation is likely to have but a short life. The technical theology in Dante or in Milton may be a source of weakness, and of weakness the more marked in proportion to the apparent continuity and rotundity of the thought; but