"We join the throng
Of the dance and the song,
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;
As the flying-fish leap
From the Indian deep
And mix with the sea-birds half asleep."
This long lyric outburst, wholly unnecessary to an action which was
already complete, seems an instructive fact to place before young
writers in a time when many souls which might be poetic gardens if
they would compact all their energies into growing two roses and a
lily--three poems in all, for a lifetime--become instead mere wastes
of profuse weeds that grow and are cut down and cast into the oven
with each monthly magazine.
But it would not be fair to leave Shelley with this flat taste in our
mouths, and I will therefore beg to finish our examination of the
_Prometheus Unbound_ by three quotations from these last acts, in
which his modernness of detail and of subtlety,--being exercised upon
matters capable of such treatment--has made for us some strong and
beautiful poetry. Here for instance at the opening of Scene I. Act II.
we have a charming specimen of the modern poetic treatment of nature
and of landscape, full of spirituality and full of detail. The stage
direction is "Morning; A Lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. Asia,
alone." Asia, who is the lovely bride of Prometheus, is awaiting
Panthea who is to come with news of him. She begins with an invocation
of the Spring.