Collected Works (Vol. II)

INTRODUCTION 143 sang in words of surpassing beauty: for of course the thought in one or two passages of this poem is practically identical with that in certain parts of ‘‘ Queen Mab” and ‘‘ Prome- theus Unbound.” But the very beauty of these poems (especially the latter) is its weakness: it is possible that the mind of the reader, lost in the sensuous, nay! even in the moral beauty of the words, may fail to be impressed by their most important meaning. Sheiley himself recognised this later : hence the direct and simple vigour of the ‘‘ Masque of Anarchy.” It has often puzzled atheists how a man of Milton’s genius could have written as he did of Christianity. But we must not forget that Milton lived immediately after the most important Revolution in Religion and Politics of modern times: Shelley on the brink of such another Political upheaval. Shake- speare alone sat enthroned above it all like a god, and is not lost in the mire of contro- versy.* This also, though ‘ I’m no Shakes- peare, as too probable,” I have endeavoured to avoid : yet I cannot but express the hope that my own enquiries into religion may be the reflection of the spirit of the age; and that plunged as we are in the midst of jingoism and religious revival, we may be standing on the edge of some gigantic precipice, over which we may cast all our impedimenta of lies and trickeries, political, social, moral, and religious, and (ourselves) take wings and fly. The comparison be- tween myself and the masters of English thought I have named is unintentional, though perhaps unavoidable; and though the presumption is, of course, absurd, yet a straw will show which way the wind blows as well as the most beautiful and elaborate vane : and in this sense it is my most eager hope that I may not unjustly draw a com- parison between myself and the great re- formers of eighty years ago. * So it is usually supposed. Maybe I shall one day find words to combat, perhaps to overthrow, this position. P.S. As, forexample, page 186. original eleven stone three Peacherine.—A. C. As a promise-keeper I am the } I must apologise (perhaps) for the new note of frivolity in my work: due doubtless to the frivolity of my subject: these poems being written when I was an Advaitist and could not see why—everything being an illusion—there should be any particular ob- ject in doing or thinking anything. How I have found the answer will be evident from my essay on this subject.* I must indeed apologise to the illustrious Shade of Robert Browning for my audacious parody in title, style, and matter of his ‘‘ Christmas Eve and Easter Day.” The more I read it the eventual anticlimax of that wonderful poem irritated me only the more. But there is hardly any poet living or dead who so com- mands alike my personal affection and moral admiration. My desire to find the Truth will be my pardon with him, whose whole life was spent in admiration of Truth, though he never turned its formidable engines against the Citadel of the Almighty. If I be appealed of blasphemy or irreve- rence in my treatment of these subjects,I will take refuge in Browning’s own apology, from the very poem I am attacking: ‘‘T have done: and if any blames me, Thinking that merely to touch in brevity The topics I dwell on were unlawful— Or worse, that I trench with undue levity On the bounds of the holy and the awful— I praise the heart and pity the head of him, And refer myself to Thee, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter Where frothy spume and frequent splutter Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest !”’ But.I have after all little fear that I am seriously wrong. That I show to my critics the open door of the above city of refuge may be taken as merely another gesture of contemptuous pity, the last insult which may lead my antagonists to that surrender which is the truest victory. PEACE TO ALL BEINGS. * Vide infra, ‘‘ Berashith.”’