Percy Bysshe Shelley

“ In one sense a beautiful poem can never be illustrated: being beautiful it is already perfect, and, to intelligent minds, illustrates itself. Everything that it says it says in the best possible way; within the limits of the medium chosen, it is absolute.
If, therefore, illustration is to be an attempt to say over again what the poet has already said perfectly, it is certain to prove itself superfluous, and to be nothing better than a labour of tautology. ”

“ The spirit of the poem is likely to obsess him, and compel from him only such an interpretation as is, allowing for the casual differences of kindred arts and sympathetic temperaments, truly and finely accordant with its own essential qualities and terms of expression. The true poets have that power of continuing to enlarge the original issues and influences of their song long after its immediate effect has died away. Shelley commands with a more than usual lyric enchantment a sphere that, like the magic house of Merlin, can go on enlarging itself ”

“ When one considers the rarity and the half-impalpable conditions of this chosen realm of his poetry, and turns to The Sensitive Plant as one of its most essential expressions, one is at first rendered half-incredulous of the power of a kindred art to interpret effectively such a poem. But, in fact, there is a much more concrete imagery—whether of flowers or weeds, directly presented or definitely symbolised; or of the Lady who haunts among them—than one at all remembers until one takes to conning its stanzas closely with an eye to such effects. ”

“ The Sensitive Plant lends itself more readily to the art of the symbolist, in particular, than any other of Shelley’s poems. It would be quite possible for a critic with a turn for metaphysics, and a certain German patience of analytic ingenuity, to read into its exquisite fable of mortality a whole world of significance, which the poet himself had never suspected. But the symbolic [13] artist, if he be too, as needs be, a symbolic poet, is saved by his art. ”

“ And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare: IX
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up ”

“ But a miracle is not less miraculous because we know the conditions under which it was worked, and something inexplicable remains about The Sensitive Plant after we have gathered together everything we can of its circumstances and the moods of its poet in the memorable Pisan days when it was written.
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. ”

“ It is an unpopular thing, may be, to assert that man’s sense of beauty is so conditional to himself and the uses he makes of it. [18] Yet here we are shown how, with war to the death, unsightly overthrow follows his abandonment of his stolen pleasure-ground, and wipes out his trespassing footprints. ”

“ As a Mænad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; ”

“ 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.” This brings us as near, I imagine, to the idea of The Sensitive Plant as we are likely to find ourselves in any other most Shelleyan region of his poetry. The lines recur persistently to the mind in reading the later poem ”