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BYGONE SUSSEX. |
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The fresh earth in new leaves drest,
And the starry night; Autumn evening, and the morn When the golden mists are born.
I love snow, and all the forms
Of the radiant frost; I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost Which is Nature's, and may be • Untainted by man's misery."
It is this delight in natural and intellectual beauty, and the desire to remove the taint of misery, that animates Shelley's vegetarianism. His interest in this subject was profound and continuous. He translated Plutarch's essays against flesh eating ; he refers to the subject again and again—in " Queen Mab," in " Laon and Cythna," in "Alastor,"in the "Refutation of Deism," and in the " Vindication of Natural Diet." He was a water drinker and a bread eater by choice, but he saw that the slaughter of sentient creatures to supply the food of mankind has social and moral as well as physiological consequences. He saw that the fruit and grain destroyed in the manufacture of intoxicants is so much material subtracted from the food supply, and that the conversion of plant food into flesh food is the most |
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