This persistent upward striving, this earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems.

But it cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic art should always be found in them.

They have something of the waywardness and negligence of nature, something of the asymmetreia we admire in the earlier creations of Greek architecture.

That Shelley, acute critic and profound student as he was, could conform himself to rule and show himself an artist in the stricter sense, is, however, abundantly proved by "The Cenci" and by "Adonais".

The reason why he did not always observe this method will be understood by those who have studied his "Defence of Poetry", and learned to sympathize with his impassioned theory of art.
Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice to Shelley's life or poetry.