"
This is a new embodiment, certainly, whence he who gains not, for the
moment at least, a loftier feeling of death, must be dull either of
heart or of understanding. But has Shelley created this figure, or only
put together its parts according to the harmony of truths already
embodied in each of the parts? For first he takes the inventions of his
fellow-men, in glass, in colour, in dome: with these he represents life
as finite though elevated, and as an analysis although a lovely one.
Next he presents eternity as the dome of the sky above this dome of
coloured glass--the sky having ever been regarded as the true symbol of
eternity. This portion of the figure he enriches by the attribution of
whiteness, or unity and radiance. And last, he shows us Death as the
destroying revealer, walking aloft through, the upper region, treading
out this life-bubble of colours, that the man may look beyond it and
behold the true, the uncoloured, the all-coloured.
But although the human imagination has no choice but to make use of the
forms already prepared for it, its operation is the same as that of the
divine inasmuch as it does put thought into form.
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