20. Resume of the Symposium: Shelley was a man of lofty and generous character. He was filled with a passion for reforming the world. He idealized Love as the saving emotion of humanity; to him Love was what Beauty was to Keats, the guiding principle of life. He was no mean thinker though sometimes vague and misty. His poetry is vague because he was quasi-metaphysical: because he clings continually to his view of the abstract truth, and because the visible world and the world of thought mingle them selves inextricably in his contemplation of it. For him there is no boundary-line between the two worlds; the one is as real and actual as the other. It is a vague world but it is a beautiful world—a world where music and moonlight and feeling are one, a world, moreover, where Shelley reigns absolutely master. His verse is strong as well as beautiful. His genius was essentially lyrical; his lyrics express the complex and aspiring emotions and vibrate sweet music and verbal witchery. He influenced Browning and Swinburne. He was romantic in his vivid individuality, and was full of lofty aspirations and idealizations. “The countless beautiful forms and images in Shelley’s poetry, the radiant colour investing them, the spontaneity and freedom of his lyric utterance, and the matchless rhythm of his verse—all have their unique charm.”
