...when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together...loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-being live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.43 Powerful objections...

...when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together...lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. — Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor: Or the Spirit of Solitude Contents Preface xi Abbreviations xv Introduction...

...untimely death. Shelley's preface to the poem, in which he ironically quotes Wordsworth against Wordsworth ("The good die first, / And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, / Burn to the socket!"), is an attempt to distance himself from both the influence of Wordsworth and his alienated persona,...

...Spirit of Solitude" (dated 14 December 1815), by quoting Wordsworth's apparent spokesman in book 1: "The good die first, / And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, / Burn to the socket!" 2 Shelley's deeply antagonistic gesture twists the storytelling Wanderer's exclamation of grief for...

...when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together...unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.26 Through Mrs. Shelley's journal entries we know that during 1816-1817, when Frankenstein was...

...left an impression on our hearts, we assent to and adopt the poet's pathetic complaint : • O, Sir ! the good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, Burn to the socket.-)Thus that the humane plan described in the pages now referred to, a system in pursuance of...

...anticipated by the quotation from book I of The Excursion, on which the "Preface" closes: "[Oh, Sir!] the good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket!" (WPW, 1.500-502) These are the lines with which the Wanderer begins the tale of "poor Margaret" (1.504),...

...aiming at what he saw as Wordsworth's self-serving surrender of his earlier ideals when he wrote that "those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful...and prepare for their old age a miserable grave." He follows this with an ironic (mis)quote from The Excursion: The good die first, And those whose hearts...

...Shelley condemned those "meaner spirits" who "loving nothing on this earth . . . are morally dead. . . . Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave."30 This attack on the older Wordsworth (and perhaps Coleridge)31 reflected the Alastor Poet's...

...defense culminates in a quotation of Wordsworth's terrifying lines on Margaret from The Excursion: "The good die first, / And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, / Burn to the socket! "r' Allying the Poet with Margaret — who sacrificed her well-being, her children, and finally her...