t of its
logic, Shelley compares the flowing through our mind of 'the universe of
things,' which are, he has explained elsewhere, but thoughts, to the
flowing of the Arne through the ravine, and compares the unknown sources
of our thoughts in some 'remoter world' whose 'gleams' 'visit the soul in
sleep,' to Arne's sources among the glaciers on the mountain heights.
Cythna in the passage where she speaks of making signs 'a subtle language
within language' on the sand by the 'fountain' of sea water in the cave
where she is imprisoned, speaks of the 'cave' of her mind which gave its
secrets to her, and of 'one mind the type of all' which is a 'moveless
wave' reflecting 'all moveless things that are'; and then passing more
completely under the power of the symbol, she speaks of growing wise
through contemplation of the images that rise out of the fountain at the
call of her will. Again and again one finds some passing allusion to the
cave of man's mind, or to the caves of his youth, or to the cave of
mysteries we enter at death, for to Shelley as to Porphyry it is more than
an image of life in the world. It may mean any enclosed life, as when it
is the dwelling-place of Asia and Prometheus, or when it is 'the still
cave of poetry,' and it may have all meanings at once, or it may have as
little meaning as some ancient religious symbol enwoven from the habit of
centuries with the patterns of a carpet or a tapestry.

As Shelley sailed along those great rivers and saw or imagined the cave
that associated itself with rivers in his mind, he saw half-ruined towers
upon the hilltops, and once at any rate a tower is used to symbolize a
meaning that is the contrary to the meaning symbolized by caves. Cythna's
lover is brought through the cave where there is a polluted fountain to a
high tower, for being man's far-seeing mind, when the world has cast him
out he must to the 'towers of thought's crowned powers'; nor is it
possible for Shelley to have forgotten this first imprisonment when he
made men imprison Lionel in a tower for a like offence; and because I know
how hard it is to forget a symbolical meaning, once one has found it, I
believe Shelley had more than a romantic scene in his mind when he made
Prince Athanase follow his mysterious studies in a lighted tower above the
sea, and when he made the old hermit watch over Laon in his sickness in a
half-ruined tower, wherein the sea, here doubtless as to Cythna, 'the one
mind,' threw