nstinctive perception (immense in range and fertility, astonishing for
its delicate intuition) of the underlying analogies the secret
subterranean passages, between matter and soul; the chromatic scales,
whereat we dimly guess, by which the Almighty modulates through all the
keys of creation. Because, the more we consider it, the more likely does
it appear that Nature is but an imperfect actress, whose constant changes
of dress never change her manner and method, who is the same in all her
parts.

To Shelley's ethereal vision the most rarified mental or spiritual music
traced its beautiful corresponding forms on the sand of outward things.
He stood thus at the very junction-lines of the visible and invisible,
and could shift the points as he willed. His thoughts became a mounted
infantry, passing with baffling swiftness from horse to foot or foot to
horse. He could express as he listed the material and the immaterial in
terms of each other. Never has a poet in the past rivalled him as
regards this gift, and hardly will any poet rival him as regards it in
the future: men are like first to see the promised doom lay its hand on
the tree of heaven and shake down the golden leaves. {7}

The finest specimens of this faculty are probably to be sought in that
Shelleian treasury, _Prometheus Unbound_. It is unquestionably the
greatest and most prodigal exhibition of Shelley's powers, this amazing
lyric world, where immortal clarities sigh past in the perfumes of the
blossoms, populate the breathings of the breeze, throng and twinkle in
the leaves that twirl upon the bough; where the very grass is all
a-rustle with lovely spirit-things, and a weeping mist of music fills the
air. The final scenes especially are such a Bacchic reel and rout and
revelry of beauty as leaves one staggered and giddy; poetry is spilt like
wine, music runs to drunken waste. The choruses sweep down the wind,
tirelessly, flight after flight, till the breathless soul almost cries
for respite from the unrolling splendours. Yet these scenes, so
wonderful from a purely poetical standpoint that no one could wish them
away, are (to our humble thinking) nevertheless the artistic error of the
poem. Abstractedly, the development of Shelley's idea required that he
should show the earthly paradise which was to follow the fall of Zeus.
But dramatically with that fall the action ceases, and the drama should
have ceased with it. A final chorus, or choral serie