An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry

Memorabilia.

The speaker is one to whom Shelley is an almost ideal being. He can hardly think of him as a man of flesh and blood. He meets some one who has actually seen him and talked with him; and it’s all so strange to him, and he expresses so much surprise at it, that it moves the laughter of the other, and he breaks off and speaks of crossing a moor. Only a hand’s breadth of it shines alone ‘mid the blank miles round about; for there he picked up, and put inside his breast, a moulted feather, an eagle-feather. He forgets the rest. There is, in fact, nothing more for him to remember. The eagle-feather causes an isolated flash of association with the poet of the atmosphere, the winds, and the clouds,

     “The meteoric poet of air and sea.”