+Stanza 2,+ 1. 1. _And ever as he went he swept a lyre Of unaccustomed shape._ 'He' has always hitherto, I think, been understood as the 'one frail form' of st 31--i.e. Shelley himself. The lyre might be of unaccustomed shape for the purpose of indicating that Shelley's poetry differs very essentially, in tone and treatment, from that of other writers. But I incline to think that Shelley, in this stanza, refers not to himself but to Moore. Moore was termed a 'lyrist,' and here we are told about his lyre. The latter would naturally be the Irish harp, and therefore 'of unaccustomed shape': the concluding reference to 'ever-during green' might again glance at the 'Emerald Isle.' As to Shelley, he was stated in st. 33 to be carrying 'a light spear': if he was constantly sweeping a lyre as well, he must have had his hands rather full. 1. 3. _Now like the ... of impetuous fire_, &c. Shelley compares the strains of the lyre--the spirit of the poetry--to two things: (1) to a conflagration in a forest; and (2) to the rustling of wind among the trees. The former image may be understood to apply principally to the revolutionary audacity and fervour of the ideas expressed; the latter, to those qualities of imagination, fantasy, beauty, and melody, which characterise the verse. Of course all this would be more genuinely appropriate to Shelley himself than to Moore: still it would admit of _some_ application to Moore, of whom our poet spoke highly more than once elsewhere. The image of a forest on fire is more fully expressed in a passage from the _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, composed by him in 1818:-- 'Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might,-- But their spark lies dead in thee [i.e. in Padua], Trampled out by Tyranny, As the Norway woodman quells, In the depths of piny dells, One light flame among the brakes, While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn, By the fire thus lowly born;-- The spark beneath his feet is dead; He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With a myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear;-so thou, O Tyranny! beholdest now Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest. Grovel on the earth! ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride!' +Stanza 3,+ 1. 1. _And then came one of sweet and earnest looks._ It is sufficiently clear that this stanza, and also the fragmentary beginning of stanza 4, refer to Leigh Hunt--who, in the body of the Elegy, is introduced in st. 35. The reader will observe, on looking back to that stanza, that the present one could not be added on to the description of Hunt: it is an alternative form, ultimately rejected. Its tone is ultra-sentimental, and perhaps on that account it was condemned. The simile at the close of the present stanza is ambitious, but by no means felicitous.