communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of
thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes
requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and
departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression
... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot
but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object.
It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our
own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base
desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is
essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self
appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised
above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are
inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations
of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such
visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive?

Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary
man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys
the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little
trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves
an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is
notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the
fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which
philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He
is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle,
attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus,
the fellow--so different from us--is neither to hold nor to bind. The
easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good
poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose
their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and