The Romantic poet is both man and myth. He inherits an ancient birthright and creates a new heritage. He is prophet, seer, priest, bard, creator of (imaginative) worlds, hero, and myth-maker. He is also a man speaking to other men. Poets are, according to Shelley, the vehicles for the spirit of the age and for the ages to come; they are -the unacknowledged legislators of the world.- In fact, in his Defense of Poetry (1821), Shelley endows both poetry and the poet with divine power, labeling the former -immortal creations- and the latter a person who -participates in the eternal,...