"Some twisted, echo-harboring shell, and to it's lips thy story tell and they thy comforters will be". Here the shell is sending out a message of comfort. When you sing into the shell, it spits back a rewarding sound of comfort. This shell was different than the Sad Shepard's shell. At least this Shepard hears something that can comfort him. Where did King Goll turn when he left the life he knew for a sense of comfort or happiness?.
While I was analyzing "The madness of King Goll", I noticed that the king already had everything a person could ask for. After all, a king maintains wealth and power back in those days. During the Kings battle an idea struck his mind. What was that idea? Well, this idea made him leave the battlefield, and also leave the life he knew as a king. Now where did he go? "And now I wonder in the woods, when summer gluts the golden bees" (p17, 37-38). In this statement, it's proven that he left his life as a king and went to a naturalistic setting in the woods. This is proven when he talks about the bees and the summer in the woods. "That hides away the dying sun, and sheds faint odors through the air" (p17, 71-73). "And I must wonder wood and hill through summers heat and winters cold. They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old" (p18, 71-73). Here it is implied that he is going to stay in the woods through any season. He isn't recollecting on the present life he had as a king. Instead he is looking to nature and it's beauty and art. Therefore, I don't think that King Goll wants to forget where he came from. After all, we all arose from nature. King Goll looked to nature to go back to where he came from. King Goll reminded me so much of Yeats. I will get to why he reminded me of Yeats later, but now the question is when people can't escape their present state, what do they do instead?.
When people can't leave their present state, they dream of fairylands.
