The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1Shelley, Percy Bysshe
General
The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
English poetry
The poem entitled "Alastor" may be considered as allegorical of one of
the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a
youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an
imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is
excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He
drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The
magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into
the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications at
variety not to be exhausted. so long as it is possible for his desires
to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous,
and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these
objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and
thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He
images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with
speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in
which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or
wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover
could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the
functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy
of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented
as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image.
He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his
disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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