Olympian abodes, to give us beef for ambrosia, and port for nectar.
Each poet gives what he has, and what he can offer; you spread
before us fairy bread, and enchanted wine, and shall we turn away,
with a sneer, because, out of all the multitudes of singers, one is
spiritual and strange, one has seen Artemis unveiled? One, like
Anchises, has been beloved of the Goddess, and his eyes, when he
looks on the common world of common men, are, like the eyes of
Anchises, blind with excess of light. Let Shelley sing of what he
saw, what none saw but Shelley!

Notwithstanding the popularity of your poems (the most romantic of
things didactic), our world is no better than the world you knew.
This will disappoint you, who had "a passion for reforming it."
Kings and priests are very much where you left them. True, we have
a poet who assails them, at large, frequently and fearlessly; yet
Mr. Swinburne has never, like "kind Hunt," been in prison, nor do we
fear for him a charge of treason. Moreover, chemical science has
discovered new and ingenious ways of destroying principalities and
powers. You would be interested in the methods, but your peaceful
Revolutionism, which disdained physical force, would regret their
application.

Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider
satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of
Islam, and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you
recognised and described. We have a great statesman whose methods
and eloquence somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and
Prince Athanase. Alas! he is a youth of more than seventy summers;
and not in his time will Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a
peaceful millennium in twining buds and beams.