The _Epipsychidion_ I cannot bear to look at. I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal. Shelley begins his spiritual autobiography with his early mystical intuition of the existence of spiritual beauty, which is to be the real object of his love throughout life. By Plato, of course, this love is made prenatal. Shelley says, She met me, robed in such exceeding glory That I beheld her not. As this vision was totally disjoined from earthly objects, it won the soul away from all interest in life. Therefore Shelley says, She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way And lured me towards sweet death. This early vision passed away, however, Into the dreary cone of our life's shade. This line is evidently Shelley's Platonic fashion of referring to the obscurity of this life as compared to the world of ideas. As the vision has embodied itself in this world, it is only through love of its concrete manifestations that the soul may regain it. When it is regained, it will not be, as in the beginning, a momentary intuition, but an abiding presence in the soul. The first step toward this goal was a mistaken one. Shelley describes his marriage with Harriet as a yielding to the senses merely, in other words, as slavery to the Venus Pandemos. He describes this false vision, Whose voice was venomed melody. * * * * * The breath of her false mouth was like sweet flowers, Her touch was as electric poison. Shelley was more successful in his second love, for Mary, whom he calls the "cold, chaste moon." The danger of this stage in the ascent toward beauty is that one is likely to be content with the fragmentary glimpse of beauty gained through the loved one, and by losing sight of its other embodiments fail to aspire to more complete vision. So Shelley says of this period, "I was laid asleep, spirit and limb." By a great effort, however, the next step was taken,--the agonizing one of breaking away from the bondage of this individual, in order that beauty in all its forms may appeal to one. Shelley writes, What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that moon, whose pale and waning lips Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse. Finally, the dross of its earthly embodiments being burned away by this renunciation, ideal beauty is revealed to the poet, not merely in a flash of inspiration, as at the beginning of his quest, but as an abiding presence in the soul. At least this is the ideal, but, being a poet, Shelley cannot claim the complete merging with the ideal that the philosopher possesses. At the supersensual consummation of his love, Shelley sinks back, only half conceiving of it, and cries,