Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/89



ORTUNATELY it is no longer needful to introduce the name of our noblest lyrical poet—perhaps in life and song the very noblest of all lands and ages—with some apology, meek or daring, for the enormous altitude of his flight, and the dauntless sincerity of his faith and its expressions. Although he has been dead little more than fifty years, his loving mother country, forced as she was to chasten him somewhat severely alive, already pities and almost condones his startling aberrations—a rare generosity which we cannot sufficiently admire. Yea, she is already, despite his outrageous refulgence, beginning to recognise that he is no will-o'-the-wisp or passing meteor; that he was not even a baleful irregular comet; that he is in truth a burning sphere of heaven, at least as stable and during as her own rock-ribbed, dense-clodded earth. She is perhaps ready