Structure, Symbol, and Theme in “Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills”

Abstract

Over forty years ago Oliver Elton wrote of “Lines written among the Euganean Hills”: “This poem is perfectly put together, and it is an intellectual pleasure to see its firm development, even apart from the rapid, impassioned, shimmering brilliancy of the imagery, which resolves itself into the emotions of the poet.” One need not assent to the unqualified absolute of this declaration to recognize the poem as one worthy of serious study, yet during the last half century of intensive Shelley scholarship and criticism there has appeared little to advance our understanding of “Lines written among the Euganean Hills” beyond Professor Elton's own perceptive, but necessarily brief appreciation. An examination of Shelleyana will suggest a number of reasons for this neglect by scholars of a poem that is often anthologized and frequently taught. First, Shelley criticism is a literature filled with polemicism, and “Lines written among the Euganean Hills” has never been controversial: critics and admirers of Shelley alike have conceded or declared, when they mentioned it at all, that it is a good poem. Second, its tetrameter couplets appear “uncharacteristic” of Shelley under the generalizations which govern most discussions of his poetry, thus making the poem “peripheral” to both attackers and defenders of Shelley's poetic achievement. Closely related to the problem of metrics are those of the poem's length and its date of composition: it is too long to be discussed with the lyrics, too short to qualify as a major effort, and written too early for intensive study with Shelley's late poetry. Finally, biographers have been less successful than usual in casting light on those passages—especially lines 45–65—that seem to require additional illumination before a critic can integrate the whole composition.