I also became a poet
Mary Shelley deliberately joins the obsessiveness of artistic creation to
that of scientific pursuit. Although some commentators have assumed an
implicit critique of Percy Bysshe Shelley, he follows a similar path in
"Alastor" (published in 1816). Compare--
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
(Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's
Dream, V.i.7-22)
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