e with something or other; the
error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in
flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a
mortal image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal.

Shelley begins his spiritual autobiography with his early mystical
intuition of the existence of spiritual beauty, which is to be the real
object of his love throughout life. By Plato, of course, this love is
made prenatal. Shelley says,

She met me, robed in such exceeding glory
That I beheld her not.

As this vision was totally disjoined from earthly objects, it won the
soul away from all interest in life. Therefore Shelley says,

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way
And lured me towards sweet death.

This early vision passed away, however,

Into the dreary cone of our life's shade.

This line is evidently Shelley's Platonic fashion of referring to the
obscurity of this life as compared to the world of ideas. As the vision
has embodied itself in this world, it is only through love of its
concrete manifestations that the soul may regain it. When it is
regained, it will not be, as in the beginning, a momentary intuition,
but an abiding presence in the soul.

The first step toward this goal was a mistaken one. Shelley describes
his marriage with Harriet as a yielding to the senses merely, in other
words, as slavery to the Venus Pandemos. He describes this false vision,

Whose voice was venomed melody.
* * * * *
The breath of her false mouth was like sweet flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison.

Shelley was more successful in his second love, for Mary, whom he calls
the "cold, chaste moon." The danger of this stage in the ascent toward
beauty is that one is likely to be content with the fragmentary glimpse
of beauty gained through the loved one, and by losing sight of its other
embodiments fail to aspire to more complete vision. So Shelley says of
this period, "I was laid asleep, spirit and limb." By a great effort,
however, the next step was taken,--the agonizing one of breaking away
from the bondage of this individual, in order that beauty in all its
forms may appeal to one. Shelley writes,

What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,
Blotting that moon, whose pale and waning lips
Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse.

Finally, the dross of its earthly embodiments being burned away by this
renunciation, ideal beauty is revealed to