Abstract

Poetry appears in veils but is not concealed. The subjects of poetry are "clothed in its Elysian light" not to serve the vanity of poets but to make visible a measure of their inspiration.1 This claim, central to Percy Shelley's Defence of Poetry, finds few sympathetic ears. The metaphor of poetry's dress suggests to some that poets engage in obfuscation, if not reckless cover-up. William Hazlitt says as much in an 1824 review of Shelley's Posthumous Poems: "His Muse offers her services to clothe shadowy doubts and inscrutable difficulties in a robe of glittering words, and to turn nature into a brilliant paradox. … Where we see the dazzling beacon-lights streaming over the darkness of the abyss, we dread the...