Defence of Poetry', those of a young and enthusiastic
revolutionary, which might have some interest in their proper
historical and biographical setting, but otherwise would only
be read as curiosities. We have seen that beneath Shelley's
twofold drift towards practical politics and speculative
philosophy a deeper force was working. Yet it is
characteristic of him that he always tended to regard the
writing of verse as a 'pis aller'. In 1819, when he was
actually working on 'Prometheus', he wrote to Peacock, "I
consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political
science," adding that he only wrote it because his feeble
health made it hopeless to attempt anything more useful. We
need not take this too seriously; he was often wrong about the
reasons for his own actions. From whatever motive, write
poetry he did. We will now consider some of the more
voluminous, if not the most valuable, results.

'Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude,' [4] is a long poem,
written in 1815, which seems to shadow forth the emotional
history of a young and beautiful poet. As a child he drank
deep of the beauties of nature and the sublimest creations of
the intellect, until,

"When early youth had past, he left
His cold fireside and alienated home,
To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands."

He wandered through many wildernesses, and visited the ruins of
Egypt and the East, where an Arab maiden fell in love with him
and tended him. But he passes on, "through Arabie, and Persia,