would sweep,

XXXVII

caress

arrowy cloud

When the broad sunrise filled with And dark-green chasms shades deepening gold

beautiful and white Its whirlpools where all hues did Amid sweet sounds across our path

spread and quiver, And where melodious falls did burst Like swift and lovely dreams that walk and shiver

the waves of sleep. Among rocks clad with flowers, the

foam and spray Sparkled like stars upon the sunny And ever as we sailed our minds river ;

were full Or, when the moonlight poureda holier Of love and wisdom, which would day,

overflow One vast and glittering lake around green In converse wild and sweet and wonderislands lay.

ful,

And in quick smiles whose light XXXV

would come and go

Like music o'er wide waves, and Morn, noon, and even, that boat of

in the flow
pearl outran
The streams which bore it, like the

Of sudden tears, and in the mute Of tempest, or the speedier thought

For a deep shade was cleft, and we of man

did know Which flieth forth and cannot make

That virtue, though obscured on Earth, abode;

not less Sometimes through forests, deep

Survives all mortal change in lasting

loveliness.
like night, we glode,
Between the walls of mighty moun.

XXXVIII
tains crowned
With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets

Three days and nights we sailed, as proud,

thought and feeling The homes of the departed, dimly

Number delightful hours frowned

through the sky O'er the bright waves which girt their

The sphered lamps of day and night, dark foundations round,

revealing New changes and new glories, rolled

on high, XXXVI

Sun, moon, and moonlike lamps, Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows

Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair : Mile after mile we sailed, and 'twas

On the fourth day, wild as a winddelight

wrought sca To see far off the sunbeams chase the The stream became, and fast and faster shadows

bare Over the grass : sometimes beneath The spirit-winged boat, steadily speed. the night

ing there. Of wide and vaulted caves whose

rooss were bright With starry gems we fled, whilst from Steady and swift, where the waves their deep

for

the progeny

did pour

roar

Within the vast ravine whose rists Like the swist moon this glorious earth

around, Tumultuous floods from their ten. The charmed boat approached, and there thousand fountains,

its haven found. The thunder of whose earth-uplifting

NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF Made the air sweep in whirlwinds

ISLAM, BY MRS. SHELLEY, from the shore, Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair SHELLEY possessed two remarkable child

qualities of intellect-a brilliant imaginaSecurely fled that rapid stress before, tion, and a logical exactness of reason.

His inclinations led Amid the topmost spray and sunbows almost alike to poetry and metaphysical

him (he fancied) wild

discussions. I say "he fancied," because I Wreathed in the silver mist : in joy believe the former to have been paramount, and pride we smiled.

and that it would have gained the mastery

even had he struggled against it, HowXL

ever, he said that he deliberated at one The torrent of that wide and raging time whether he should dedicate himself river

to poetry or metaphysics ; and, resolving Is passed, and our aërial speed on the former, he educated himself for it, suspended.

discarding in a great measure his philoWe look behind; a golden mist did sophical pursuits, and engaging himself in

the study of the poets of Greece, Italy, quiver

and England. To these may be added a Where its wild surges with the lake constant perusal of portions of the Old were blended :

Testamentthe Psalms, the Book of Job, Our bark hung there, as on a line the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime suspended

poetry of which filled him with delight. Between two heavens, that windless As a poet, his intellect and compositions waveless lake

were powerfully influenced by exterior Which four great cataracts from circumstances, and especially by his place four vales, attended

of abode. He was very fond of travelling, By mists, aye feed : from rocks and and ill- health increased this restlessness. clouds they break,

The sufferings occasioned by a cold English And of that azure sea a silent refuge make. colder Spring arrived, for a more genial

winter made him pine, especially when our climate. In 1816 he again visited Switzer

land, and rented a house on the banks of Motionless resting on the lake awhile, the Lake of Geneva ; and many a day, in I saw its marge of snow - bright cloud or sunshine, was passed alone in his mountains rear

boat-sailing as the wind listed, or welterTheir peaks aloft, I saw each radiant ing on the calm waters. The majestic isle,

aspect of Nature ministered such thoughts And in the midst, afar, even like a

as he afterwards enwove in verse, His sphere

lines on the Bridge of the Arve, and his Hung in one hollow sky, did there Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, were written

at this time. Perhaps during this summer appear The Temple of the Spirit ; on the his genius was checked by association with

another poet whose nature was utterly sound

dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the poem Which issued thence drawn nearer he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he and inore near,

shared for a period the more abstract and

XLI

etherealised inspiration of Shelley. The (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor saddest events awaited his return to population. The women are lacemakers, England; but such was his fear to wound and lose their health by sedentary labour, the feelings of others that he never ex- for which they were very ill paid. The pressed the anguish he felt, and seldom Poor-laws ground to the dust not only the gave vent to the indignation roused by the paupers, but those who had risen just persecutions he underwent; while the above that state, and were obliged to pay course of deep unexpressed passion, and poor -rates. The changes produced by the sense of injury, engendered the desire peace following a long war, and a bad to embody themselves in forms defecated harvest, brought with them the most heartof all the weakness and evil which cling to rending evils to the poor, Shelley afforded real life.

what alleviation he could. In the winter, He chose therefore for his hero a youth while bringing out his poem, he had a nourished in dreams of liberty, some of severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while whose actions are in direct opposition to visiting the poor cottages. I mention the opinions of the world ; but who is these things ---for this minute and active animated throughout by an ardent love of sympathy with his fellow-creatures gives a virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons thousandsold interest to his speculations, of political and intellectual freedom on his and stamps with reality his pleadings for fellow-creatures. He created for this youth the human race. a woman such as he delighted to imagine The poem, bold in its opinions and un--full of enthusiasnı for the same objects ; compromising in their expression, met with and they both, with will unvanquished, many censurers, not only among those and the deepest sense of the justice of their who allow of no virtue but such as supports cause, met adversity and death, There the cause they espouse, but even among exists in this poem a memorial of a friend those whose opinions were similar to his of his youth. The character of the old own. I extract a portion of a letter written man who liberates Laon from his tower- | in answer to one of these friends. It best prison, and tends on him in sickness, is details the impulses of Shelley's mind, and founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, his motives: it was written with entire when Shelley was at Eton, had often stood unreserve; and is therefore a precious by to befriend and support him, and whose monument of his own opinion of his name he never mentioned without love powers, of the purity of his designs, and and veneration.

the ardour with which he clung, in adverDuring the year 1817 we were estab-sity and through the valley of the shadow lished at Marlow in Buckinghamshire. of death, to views from which he believed Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly the permanent happiness of mankind must by this town being at no great distance eventually spring. from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The poem was written in

“ Marlow, Dec. II, 1817. his boat, as it floated under the beech- “I have read and considered all that groves of Bishan, or during wanderings you say about my general powers, and the in the neighbouring country, which is particular instance of the poem in which I distinguished for peculiar beauty. The have attempted to develop them. Nochalk hills break into cliffs that overhang thing can be more satisfactory to me than the Thames, or form valleys clothed with the interest which your admonitions exbeech ; the wilder portion of the country press. But I think you are mistaken in is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegeta- some points with regard to the peculiar tion ; and the cultivated part is peculiarly nature of my powers, whatever be their feruile. With all this wealth of Nature amount. I listened with deference and selfwhich, either in the form of gentlemen's suspicion to your censures of The Revolt parks or soil dedicated to agriculture, of Islam; but the productions of mine flourishes around, Marlow was inhabited | which you commend hold a very low place in my own esteem ; and this reassures me, of intellectual force, valuable to me. And, in some degree at least. The poem was if I live, or if I see any trust in coming produced by a series of thoughts which years, doubt not but that I shall do somefilled my mind with unbounded and sus- thing, whatever it may be, which a serious tained enthusiasm. I felt the precarious and earnest estimate of my powers will ness of my life, and I engaged in this task, suggest to me, and which will be in every resolved to leave some record of myself. respect accommodated to their utmost Much of what the volume contains was limits." written with the same feeling -as real, though not so prophetic-as the communications of a dying man. I never presumed

PRINCE ATHANASE 1 indeed to consider it anything approaching to faultless ; but, when I consider contem

A FRAGMENT porary productions of the same apparent

PART I pretensions, I own I was filled with confid. ence. I felt that it was in many respects THERE was a youth, who, as with toil a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt

and travel, that the sentiments were true, not assumed. Had grown quite weak and gray before And in this have I long believed that my

his time; power consists; in sympathy, and that Nor any could the restless griefs unravel part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am Which burned within him, withering up formed, if for anything not in common his prime with the herd of mankind, to apprehend And goading him, like fiends, from land minute and remote distinctions of feeling,

to land. whether relative to external nature or the

Not his the load of any secret crime, living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result For nought of ill his heart could underfrom considering either the moral or the

stand, material universe as a whole.

Of course, I believe these faculties, which perhaps

But pity and wild sorrow for the same;comprehend all that is sublime in man, Not his the thirst for glory or command to exist very imperfectly in my own mind.

Baffled with blast of hope-consuming But, when you advert to my Chancery

shame; paper a cold, forced, unimpassioned, insignificant piece of cramped and cautious Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast argument, and to the little scrap about And quench in speedy smoke its feeble Mandeville, which expressed my feelings

flame, indeed, but cost scarcely two minutes'

1 The idea Shelley had formed of Prince thought to express, as specimens of my Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor. powers more favourable than that which In the first sketch of the poem, he named it Pan

demos and Urania. Athanase seeks through grew as it were from the agony and the world the One whom he may love. He bloody sweat of intellectual travail ; meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a surely I must feel that, in some manner, lady who appears to him to embody his ideal

of love and beauty. But she proves to be either I am mistaken in believing that I

Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus ; have any talent at all, or you in the selec- who, after disappointing his cherished dreams tion of the specimens of it. Yet, after all, and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by I cannot but be conscious, in much of sorrow, pines and dies. "On his deathbed, the what I write, of an absence of that tran-kisses his lips." (The Deathbed of Athanase.)

lady who can really reply to his soul comes and quillity which is the attribute and accom- The poet describes her (in the words of the final paniment of power. This feeling alone fragment, p. 215). This slender note is all we would make your most kind and wise ad- have to aid our imagination in shaping out the

form of the poem, such as its author imagined. monitions, on the subject of the economy | [Mrs. Shelley's Note.) S

P

llad lest within his soul their dark un. With those who toild and wept, the rest :

poor and wise, Nor what religion fables of the grave His riches and his cares he did divide. Feared he,-Philosophy's accepted guest.

Fearless he was, and scorning all disFor none than he a purer heart could guise, have,

What he dared do or think, though men Or that loved good more for itself alone; might start, Of nought in heaven or earth was he the He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes; slave.

Liberal he was of soul, and frank of What sorrow strange, and shadowy, and heart, unknown,

And to his many friends—all loved him Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through

wellmankind ?--

Whate'er he knew or felt he would imIf with a human sadness he did groan,

part, He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;

If words he found those inmost thoughts Just, innocent, with varied learning fed,

to tell; And such a glorious consolation find

If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak

foes In others' joy, when all their own is He neither spurned nor hated, though dead :

with fell He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,

And mortal hate their thousand voices And yet, unlike all others, it is said,

rose,

They past like aimless arrows from his That from such toil he never found relief. Although a child of fortune and of power, Nor did his heart or mind its portal close Of an ancestral name the orphan chief,

To those, or them, or any whom life's His soul had wedded wisdom, and her sphere dower

May comprehend within its wide array. Is love and justice, clothed in which he What sadness made that vernal spirit

sere? Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,

He knew not. Though his life, day Pitying the tumult of their dark estate

after day, Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse Was failing like an unreplenished stream, The strength of wealth or thought, to Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen consecrate

lay,

ear

sate

rich use

Those false opinions which the harsh Through which his soul, like Vesper's

serene beam To blind the world they samish for their Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds, pride;

Shone, softly burning ; though his lips Nor did he hold from any man his dues,

did seem But like a steward in honest dealings Like reeds which quiver in impetuous tried

floods;