ditions under which the human will is obliged to work, but furnish no excuse for the exercise of evil impulses in man's own nature. On the contrary, he is to rule them like slaves. As the play first existed this was the climax in the thought, being the end of the third act. In the added fourth act, Shelley's poetic imagination soars to supersensuous realms. We leave the tangible plane of mind and emotion, quickened into abiding harmony by Love and voyage among what Whitman might call the seas of God." As I have already indicated, abstract Beauty seems to be symbolized in the Spirit of the Moon, abstract Truth in the Spirit of the Earth; they take upon themselves the garments of the human spirit and give voice to a love that seems to express the quintessence of exalted emotion. Hear the Moon:

"Thou art folded, thou art lying

In the light which is undying

Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;

All suns and constellations shower

On thee a light, a life, a power,

Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine

On mine, on mine!"

And again the Earth:

"O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman borne the summer night
Through isles forever calm;

O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm."

In bringing Demogorgon on the scene at the end of the act, Shelley once again touches the Infinite beyond thought or emotion. We can neither think nor feel Eternity, yet we know it in our highest consciousness as the ultimate condition of our Being. Thus it is fitting that Eternity, not Death nor Chance nor Change, which are but Motes in the sunbeams of the Infinite, becomes the supreme instructor of the will. The final word of Demogorgon implies that the dispensation of Truth, Love and Beauty is not yet accomplished throughout the universe, but that man may experience it in his own soul whenever he attains the spiritual heights of Prometheus, and becomes strong:

"To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free.
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory."

Of this closing scene George E. Woodberry, the editor of Shelley's complete works, speaks with peculiar insight in his notes:

"The sudden and complete subordination of all the beings of the universe to the idea of the Eternal Principle is accomplished with sublime effect. The drama is thus brought to an end, after its lyrical jubilee, by its highest intellectual conception giving utterance to its highest moral command -Demogorgon, the voice of Eternity, phrasing in the presence of the listening Universe of all being, the encomium of Prometheus as the type of the soul's wisdom in action in an evil world leading to the achievement of such regeneration on earth as is possible to a mortal race."

After all allowances are made for the traces

of Platonic and other Greek thought, and the echoes of poetic imagery borrowed from Milton and Shakespeare or other English poets, this drama stands out as one of the most original as well as beautiful creations in all literature. It has been analyzed to bits by various commentators, who read into it the most complicated metaphysical meanings. Doubtless, they are quite justified in their interpretations, for one of the characteristics of exalted symbolism is that like music it lends itself to the mood of the interpreter. Not only is it near to music because of the highly emotional and ecstatic language in which most of it is couched, but the thought of a universal stream of music is ever flowing out from the verse. Music is the element in which Love and Beauty attain their most exalted manifestations. Echoes music-tongued draw all spirits on that secret way:

"Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,

The storm of sound is driven along."

The Spirit of the Hour announces its triumph in music

"A long, long sound, as it would never end."

One is constantly reminded of the Pythagorean notion of the harmony of the spheres, so exquisitely described in Shakespeare's familiar lines:

There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdst,
But in his motion like an angel sings

Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubims
Such harmony is in immortal souls,

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close in it we cannot hear it."

The Greek harmony of the spheres was a melodic one, crude indeed, in comparison with our modern conceptions of harmony. Between the simple, sculpturesque strength of the Greek" Prometheus" play and the many-tinted, symbolistic nature-painting of Shelley's play, there is as great a difference as between the naked scales of Pythagoras and the poignant soul-touching diminished seventh harmonies of a modern symphony.

Around this double sun of Prometheus plays, other modern treatments revolve with more or less reflected brilliancy. Herder brings in Themis as the Goddess of Justice to judge between the cause of Prometheus and Zeus. The judgment is, of