On their return from this river journey, Shelley began the poem of “Alastor”, haunting the woodland glades and oak groves of Windsor Forest, and drawing from that noble scenery his inspiration.  It was printed with a few other poems in one volume the next year.  Not only was “Alastor” the first serious poem published by Shelley; but it was also the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his genius.  Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music; and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced in certain passages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, is such as only Shelley could have produced.

“Alastor” is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its victim into desert places; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose it for the title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary souls.  Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, “Alastor” has great autobiographical value.  Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written under the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life.  This accounts for the somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its sublime descriptions.  All that Shelley had observed of natural beauty—­in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of the Reuss, beneath the oak shades of the forest—­is presented to us in a series of pictures penetrated with profound emotion.  But the deeper meaning of “Alastor” is to be found, not in the thought of death nor in the poet’s recent communings with nature, but in the motto from St. Augustine placed upon its title page, and in the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, composed about a year later.  Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the poet pursues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage the thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing for some mortal realization of his love.  “Alastor”, like “Epipsychidion,” reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that the idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form:  while the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” recognizes the truth that such realization of the ideal is impossible.  The very last letter written by Shelley sets the misconception in its proper light:  “I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.”  But this Shelley discovered only with “the years that bring the philosophic mind,” and when he was upon the very verge of his untimely death.

The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse of “Alastor”.  It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an ideal love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the poet’s heart:—­