To Shelley poetry came hard. Some of his lyrics, most quick and intense, did not rise through easy inspiration. The pages of his Note Books are full of pitchings forward, startings back, travail, and keen uncertainty. Poems like The Masque of Anarchy which one might think of as being plucked in full petal out of the inspired wrath of the poet's heart grew rather against the edge of a painful gardener's knife. The “Down down” lyric of Prometheus, although fastening itself within the poet's imagination, for a long time defied creativity. The inability of Shelley at once to apprehend the artistic relationship existing between those images and rhythms which visited his mind, haunted his thoughts and hung in his memory, is with him a vital characteristic.