Book excerpt: The title picture of Percy Bysshe Shelley in combination with the words 'Wandering" and "defence" imply that "wandering" is another way of saying "poetry," an inference to be drawn from the words of great poets of Shelley's generation. In every age most probably poetry needs to be defended anew. In Shelley's day the threat sprang from a philosophical climate that saw virtue in lucid unambiguous prose alone. Today leading theorists deny any vital connection between words found in poetry and literary prose and what they ostensibly point to in the world around. As such critics cannot find anything in 'wandering' to support their arguments they tend to ignore it as far as possible but words such as 'wanderer' are so deeply entrenched in German and English poetry that "wandering" resolutely stays put.