Milton Wilson, commenting on lines 422-49, notes the lack of clouds in this paradisiacal setting, that the poet's and Emily's place "is taken by the foam of the ocean, the undulation of the tide, the sifting of the sand, the sound of waterfalls and nightingales, and the scent of lemon flowers, which is the only 'mist' on this Ionian isle" (113).
However,
Shelley is continually modifying these images of evanescence and process by others which suggest sharpness and clarity and hardness: "clear and golden air," "as clear as elemental diamond" "the light clear element," "clear tranquility." The world "clear" recurs like a leitmotifin the passage; while certain other adjectives or verbs also contribute to a sense of solidity or sharpness in the midst of fluidity: there are "thick woods," the "rough shepherd," and the tracks which "pierce" into the glades and caverns which are "built round with ivy" (113).
Wilson's observations remind me of both Coleridge and Shelley's description of the poetic impulse and poetic practice. Let's look at the following quote from Shelley in Defence of Poetry:
Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it, by their motion, to ever-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human being (and perhaps within all sentient beings) which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound--even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions, and every inflection of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakened it. It will be the reflected image of that impression--and as the lyre trebles and sounds after the wind has died away, so the child seeks, by prolonging its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the objects which delight a child, these expressions are what poetry is to higher objects. (par. 2)
Shelley's distinction between melody and harmony is worth studying. I realized that I have spent most of my life assuming the two were synonymous. The collegiate addition of the American Heritage Dictionary has two different definitions for melody: 1) "musical sounds in agreeable succession or arrangement." 2) "a rhythmical succession of musical tones organized as distinct phrases or distinctive phrases." And the dictionary has three separate definitions for harmony: 1) "agreement; accord; harmonious relations." 2) "a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts; congruity." 3) a: "any simultaneous combination of tones." b: "the simultaneous combination of tones, esp. when rendered into cords pleasing to the ear; chordal-structure, as distinguished from melody and rhythm. c: the science of structure, relations, and practical combination of chords." So while the melody is as succession of sounds that are agreeable to the ear but do not have a human-generated, determinable structure, harmony requires the rather complex process of arrangement, an orchestration of sounds--images, words, etc. For Shelley, poetry requires a sensitivity to the melody of words, images, sounds, but it also requires a desire to rearrange and manipulate the images in order to more accurately reflect both the sentiment of the poetic mind or that of the particular subject. In the above passage, Shelley must have been thinking of Coleridge's "Aeolian Harp."
There is a strikingly similar passage from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, one of the "famous" ones, where he provides us with the difference between the primary and secondary imaginations:
The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. (par. 20)
Shelley's constant "modification" can be looked at as the "diffus[ing]," "dissipating," and "recreating." The Ionian isle in Epipsychidion is Shelley's own creation, yet it is also a combination of images that he has experienced. Jennifer Wallace informs us that Shelley's conception of Greece and its climate came from his experience in Greek colonies in Italy. She also notes that Greece for English writers and artists was "perceived to be eastern, different and unattainable. It was represented as exotic and mysterious. Much was acknowledged to be left to the imagination through lack of knowledge" (125-26). Shelley's indirect connection to Greece allows his secondary imagination to have a less restricted reign, one that is directed by his imperfect impressions gathered through readings and experiences in Italy.
Wallace, Jennifer. Shelley and Greece : Rethinking Romantic Hellenism. New York : St. Martin's P, 1997.
Wilson, Milton Thomas. Shelley's Later Poetry. New York: Columbia UP, 1957.