Page 38 - GALIET THE HEROIC SPECTACLE OF MORALS: Hume IV
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Galiet & Galiet
perennially asking and being asked: perennially dwelling in Hermes’ place, fixing in endless
concepts and images its gaze, so as to decipher, ever so ephemerally, songs pregnant with sense; yet, always forgetting its first breath 3⁄4 Poetry sublime. Now, she, O most enchanting Muse, from Parnassus’ springs, having lost her holy Mountains of Helikon and throne and starry mirror, her celestial strings, wanders off in dark woods lost and torn, with tears weaving what once she deeply in her spirit sung and knew:
“the Story of particular facts is as a mirror, which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful:
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”119
(Shelley, A Defence of Poetry)
119 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 978
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