for respite from the unrolling splendours. Yet these scenes, so
wonderful from a purely poetical standpoint that no one could wish them
away, are (to our humble thinking) nevertheless the artistic error of the
poem. Abstractedly, the development of Shelley's idea required that he
should show the earthly paradise which was to follow the fall of Zeus.
But dramatically with that fall the action ceases, and the drama should
have ceased with it. A final chorus, or choral series, of rejoicings
(such as does ultimately end the drama where Prometheus appears on the
scene) would have been legitimate enough. Instead, however, the
bewildered reader finds the drama unfolding itself through scene after
scene which leaves the action precisely where it found it, because there
is no longer an action to advance. It is as if the choral _finale_ of an
opera were prolonged through two acts.

We have, nevertheless, called _Prometheus_ Shelley's greatest poem
because it is the most comprehensive storehouse of his power. Were we
asked to name the most _perfect_ among his longer efforts, we should name
the poem in which he lamented Keats: under the shed petals of his lovely
fancy giving the slain bird a silken burial. Seldom is the death of a
poet mourned in true poetry. Not often is the singer coffined in laurel-
wood. Among the very few exceptions to such a rule, the greatest is
_Adonais_. In the English language only _Lycidas_ competes with it; and
when we prefer _Adonais_ to _Lycidas_, we are following the precedent set
in the case of Cicero: _Adonais_ is the longer. As regards command over
abstraction, it is no less characteristically Shelleian than
_Prometheus_. It is throughout a series of abstractions vitalised with
daring exquisiteness, from Morning who sought:

Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,