of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is
(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been
discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a
[Greek: _storghe_] rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its
fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And
not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet
has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrimae
rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things
pierce the soul."

And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as
reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the
best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the
record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."
He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being
"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the
sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they
communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of
thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes
requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and
departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression
... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot
but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object.
It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our
own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base
desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is
essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self
appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised
above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are
inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations
of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such
visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive?

Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary
man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys
the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so