" "And
not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet
has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrimae
rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things
pierce the soul."
And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as
reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the
best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the
record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."
He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being
"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the
sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they
communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of
thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes
requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and
departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression
... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot
but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object.
It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our
own, .
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