All through this period, so far as we can gather, Shelley was extremely discouraged about his poetry and the reception it had attained hitherto. From Medwin and others we learn of the special resentment he felt at the continual hostilities of the powerful quarterly engines of critical opinion. In a letter to Ollier, he said, during 1820: “I doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with the hell or the paradise of poetry, but the torments of its purgatory vex me without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to the vexation.” However, when a poet of Shelley’s plenary inspiration decides not to write, he is likely to be impelled most strongly by his _dæmon_ to new flights. The “Ode to a Skylark,” the “Witch of Atlas,” the “Ode to Liberty,” among other poems, belong to this period; and with them we have the invincible declaration of the poet’s rights and inalienable liberties, to be found in his prose “Defence of Poetry.” One or two stanzas there are in the “Witch of Atlas,” and one or two passages in the “Defence,” which strike us as being more intimately connected with the occult imaginative origins of THE SENSITIVE PLANT than anything found elsewhere in his writings. Take the strange, melodious verses in which the radiant creature of the mountains is presented,—the lovely lady garmented in the light of her own beauty, to whom the camelopard and the brindled lioness, the herdsmen and the mountain maidens came: “_For she was beautiful: her beauty made_ _The bright world dim, and everything beside_ _Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:_ _No thought of living spirit could abide_ _(Which to her looks had ever been betrayed)_ _On any object in the world so wide,_ _On any hope within the circling skies,_ _But in her form, and in her inmost eyes._ * * * * * “_The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling_ _Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,_ _Which had the power all spirits of compelling,_ _Folded in cells of crystal silence there._” * * * * * A few stanzas later, and we come to the idea of the strange seed, which was wrapt in mould, and watered all the summer with sweet dew. At length: “_The plant grew strong and green—the sunny flower_ _Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began_ _To turn the light and dew by inward power_ _To its own substance._”