made.

And the artless simplicity of Shelley's technique--much more really
simple than the conscious "childishness" exquisite though that is, of
a Blake or Verlaine--lends itself so wonderfully to the expression of
youth's eternal sorrow. His best lyrics use words that fall into their
places with the "dying fall" of an actual fit of sobbing. And they are
so naturally chosen, his images and metaphors! Even when they
seem most remote, they are such as frail young hearts cannot help
happening upon, as they soothe their "love-laden souls" in "secret
hour."

The infallible test of genuine poetry is that it forces us to recall
emotions that we ourselves have had, with the very form and
circumstance of their passion. And who can read the verses of
Shelley without recalling such? That peculiar poignancy of memory,
like a sharp spear, which arrests us at the smell of certain plants or
mosses, or nameless earth-mould, or "growths by the margins of
pond-waters;" that poignancy which brings back the indescribable
balm of Spring and the bitter-sweetness of irremediable loss; who
can communicate it like Shelley?

There are lovely touches of foreign scenery in his poems,
particularly of the vineyards and olive gardens and clear-cut hill
towns of Italy; but for English readers it will always be the rosemary
"that is for remembrance" and the pansies that "are for thoughts" that
give their perfume to the feelings he excites.

Other poets may be remembered at other times, but it is when the
sun-warmed woods smell of the first primroses, and the daffodils,
coming "before the swallow dares," lift up their heads above the
grass, that the sting of this sweetness, too exquisite to last beyond a
moment, brings its intolerable hope and its intolerable regret.

KEATS

It is well that there should be at least one poet of Beauty--of Beauty
alone--of Beauty and naught else. It is well that one should dare to
follow that terrible goddess even to the bitter end. That pitiless
marble altar has its victims, as the other Altars. The "white
implacable Aphrodite" cries aloud for blood--for the blood of our
dearest affections; for the blood of our most cherished hopes; for the
blood of our integrity and faith; for the blood of our reason. She
drugs us, blinds us, tortures us, maddens us, and slays us--yet we
follow her--to the bitter end!

Beauty hath her Martyrs, as the rest; and of these Keats is the
Protagonist; the youngest and the fairest