While the beauty of Adonais is easily appreciated,
'Epipsychidion', written in the same year, must strike many
readers as mere moonshine and madness. In 'Alastor', the poet,
at the opening of his career, had pursued in vain through the
wilderness of the world a vision of ideal loveliness; it would
now seem that this vision is at last embodied in "the noble and
unfortunate Lady Emilia Viviani," to whom 'Epipsychidion' is
addressed. Shelley begins by exhausting, in the effort to
express her perfection, all the metaphors that rapture can
suggest. He calls her his adored nightingale, a spirit-winged
heart, a seraph of heaven, sweet benediction in the eternal
curse, moon beyond the clouds, star above the storm, "thou
Wonder and thou Beauty and thou Terror! Thou Harmony of
Nature's art!" She is a sweet lamp, a "well of sealed and
secret happiness," a star, a tone, a light, a solitude, a
refuge, a delight, a lute, a buried treasure, a cradle, a
violet-shaded grave, an antelope, a moon shining through a mist
of dew. But all his "world of fancies" is unequal to express
her; he breaks off in despair. A calmer passage of great
interest then explains his philosophy of love:

"That best philosophy, whose taste
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom,"

and tells how he "never was attached to that great sect," which
requires that everyone should bind himself for life to one
mistress or friend; for the secret of true love is that it is
increased, not diminished, by division; like imagination, it
fills the universe; the parts exceed the whole, and this is the