semi-emblematic

Updated: May 22, 2025

Using language of a semi-emblematic kind, we might perhaps express something of Shelley's belief thus: Mankind is the microcosm, as distinguished from the rest of the universe, which forms the macrocosm; and, as long as a man's body and soul remain in combination, his soul pertains to the microcosm: when this combination ceases with the death of the body, his soul, in whatever sense it may be held to exist, lapses into the macrocosm, but there is neither knowledge as to the mode of its existence, nor speech capable of recording this.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Adonais