The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawl

ing,

The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

DEATH

I

DEATH is here, and death is there,

Death is busy everywhere,

All around, within, beneath,

Above, is death — and we are death.

Our hopes, and then our fears—and when

Death. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust- and we die too.

IV

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves, must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot

Love itself would, did they not.

LIBERTY

I

THE fiery mountains answer each other,
Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;
The tempestuous oceans awake one another,
And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne,
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.

II

From a single cloud the lightning flashes,
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around;
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
Is bellowing underground.

III

But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp.

Liberty. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

IV

From billow and mountain and exhalation

The sunlight is darted through vapor and blast;
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
From city to hamlet, thy dawning is cast,
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night
In the van of the morning light.

SUMMER AND WINTER

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon — and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when
Among their children comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!

Summer and Winter. Published by Mrs. Shelley, in The Keepsake, 1829.

THE TOWER OF FAMINE

AMID the desolation of a city,

Which was the cradle and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people, so that pity

Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave

For bread, and gold, and blood; pain, linked to guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes, each marble-ribbèd roof,
The brazen-gated temples and the bowers

Of solitary wealth; the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air

Are by its presence dimmed-they stand aloof,

And are withdrawn so that the world is bare; As if a spectre, wrapped in shapeless terror, Amid a company of ladies fair

Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
Of all their beauty,

and their hair and hue,

The Tower of Famine. Published by Mrs. Shelley, in The Keepsake, 1829.

11-14 Each... temple... wealth, i' the... pavilion, Rossetti conj.

16 world || void, Rossetti conj.

The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error, Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.

AN ALLEGORY

I

A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant

Stands yawning on the highway of the life Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt; Around it rages an unceasing strife

Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.

II

And many pass it by with careless tread,
Not knowing that a shadowy..
Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
Wait peacefully for their companion new ;
But others, by more curious humor led,

Pause to examine; these are very few,
And they learn little there, except to know
That shadows follow them where'er they go.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS

I

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

An Allegory. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.
ii. 1 pass, Rossetti || passed, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

The World's Wanderers. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.