" "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child....
He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to
watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their children.
The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall.
He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright
mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. He
teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of
its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven; its floor
is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of
ether. He chases the rolling world." He who could write thus, and who
could melt our hearts with _To Monica Thought Dying_ and its refrain,
"A cup of chocolate,
One farthing is the rate,
You drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw"
--surely he must have had some wonderful right of entrance into the
innocent fellowships of childhood. Still more intimate, daring in its
incredible humility and simpleness, is his _Ex Ore Infantium_:--
"Little Jesus, wast Thou shy
Once, and just as small as I?
And what did it feel like to be
Out of Heaven, and just like me?.
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