* * * * *
Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
At the age of twenty-three Shelley wrote the poem _Alastor_. This poem
is important to us, in that it forms a record of the early spiritual
adventures of the poet, at a time when he pursued the half-revealed
images of Truth and Beauty, which tempted him, and yet eluded his grasp.
The “argument” of the poem is, in fact, the essence of Shelley’s own
inner history. Alastor, a young poet, having seen, in half-revealing
visions, glimpses of the Ideal, sets out on his quest for a mortal
“prototype of his conception.”
“His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse
with an intelligence similar to itself.” Now I have previously shown
that Shelley set out on a similar quest, and have explained how
inevitable was its failure. The poet instinctively recognised this as a
fact, for he makes Alastor, “blasted by his disappointment, descend to
an untimely grave.”
_Alastor_ shows clearly that, even in 1815, Shelley had turned to inward
meditation and mystical reverie, and had cultivated his imaginative
faculty.
By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured.