in filmy
white light; in the light of an impossible dawn. Has it been noticed
how all material objects dissolve at his touch, and float away, as
mists and vapours? He has, it seems, an almost insane predilection
for _white_ things. White violets, white pansies, white wind-flowers,
white ghosts, white daisies and white moons thrill us, as we read,
with an almost unearthly awe. White Death, too; the shadow of
white Corruption, has her place there, and the appalling whiteness of
lepers and corpses. The liturgy he chants is the liturgy of the White
Mass, and the "white radiance" of Eternity is his Real Presence.

Weird and fantastic though Shelley's dreams may appear, it is more
than likely that some of them will be realized before we expect it.
His passionate advocacy of what now is called "Feminism," his
sublime revolutionary hopes for the proletariat, his denunciation of
war, his arraignment of so-called "Law" and "Order," his indictment
of conventional Morality, his onslaughts on outworn Institutions, his
invectives against Hypocrisy and Stupidity, are not by any means
the blind Utopian rhetoric that some have called them. That crafty
slur upon brave new thought which we know so well--that
"how-can-you-take-him-seriously" attitude of the "status-quo"
rascals--must not mislead us with regard to Shelley's philosophy.

He is a genuine philosopher, as well as a dreamer. Or shall we say
he is the only kind of philosopher who _must_ be taken seriously--the
philosopher who creates the dreams of the young?

Shelley is, indeed, a most rare and invaluable thinker, as well as a
most exquisite poet. His thought and his poetry can no more be
separated than could the thought and poetry of the Book of Job. His
poetry is the embodiment of his thought, its swift and splendid
incarnation.

Strange though it may seem, there are not very many poets who
have the particular kind of _ice-cold intellect_ necessary if one is to
detach one's self completely from the idols of the market-place.
Indeed, the poetic temperament is only too apt, out of the very
warmth of its sensitive humanity, to idealize the old traditions and
throw a glamour around them. That is why, both in politics and
religion, there have been, ever since Aristophanes, so many great
reactionary poets. Their warmth of human sympathy, their "nihil
alienum" attitude; nay! their very sense of humour, have made this
inevitable. There is so often, too, something chilly and "unhom