Intellectual Beauty

In Percy Shelley's "Hym to Intellectual Beauty" the speaker writes about how Beauty has left "our state" and wants to know where it has gone. He says it will "wax and wane in lovers’ eyes—Thou—that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame!" It is interesting that he says it comes in the form of a shadow. There are many definitions of what a shadow may represent. It can be darkness, shelter and protection like "being in the shadow of a church." It can be an indistinct image, a mere semblance of something. When he is a young boy he would go conjuring spirits in woods and caves. One day that shadow of Beauty was above him and he was in ecstasy. It never says here that he saw anything. He was just in ecstasy. This means it was a feeling this shadow gave him that made him feel extreme happiness. So Beauty is not something one can go looking for in physical objects or in a face. It cannot be sought after or caught. And it waxes and wanes like the moon, ever changing. Intellectual Beauty is the feeling one creates in their own mind. One can never "have" Beauty but can feel it.