Adonais by Percy Bysshe Shelley
page 113 of 186 (60%)
page 113 of 186 (60%)
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according to a criterion of his own, which is thus expressed in his
_Defence of Poetry_ (written in the same year as _Adonais_, 1821): 'Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet; that is, the second poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it--developing itself in correspondence with their development....Milton was the third epic poet.' The poets whom Shelley admired most were probably Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespear, and Milton; he took high delight in the _Book of Job_, and presumably in some other poetical books of the Old Testament; Calderon also he prized greatly; and in his own time Goethe, Byron, and (on some grounds) Wordsworth and Coleridge. +Stanza 5,+ 1. 2. _Not all to that bright station dared to climb._ The conception embodied in the diction of this stanza is not quite so clear as might be wished. The first statement seems to amount to this--That some poets, true poets though they were, did not aspire so high, nor were capable of reaching so high, as Homer, Dante, and Milton, the typical epic poets. A statement so obviously true that it hardly extends, in itself, beyond a truism. But it must be read as introductory to what follows. 1. 3. _And happier they their happiness who knew._ Clearly a recast of the phrase of Vergil, 'O fortunati nimium sua si bona nĂ´rint Agricolae.' But Vergil speaks of men who did not adequately appreciate their own happiness; Shelley (apparently) of others who did so. He seems to |
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