And died some months before. Nor Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon less Wonder, but far more peace and joy Brought in that hour my lovely boy; For through that trance my soul had well The impress of thy being kept; No doubt, though memory faithless be, flowers, Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er The liquid marble of the windless lake; And where the agèd forest's limbs look hoar, Under the leaves which their green garments make, They come 'tis Helen's home, and clean and white, Is our sweet child. 'Tis sure most Like one which tyrants spare on our She ceased." Lo, where red morning You, cannot see his eyes, they are two Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now A shower of burning tears, which fell wind upon With equal steps and fingers intertwined: His face, and so his opening lashes Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies, And with their shadows the clear depths below, shone With tears unlike his own, as he did leap In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep. So Rosalind and Helen lived together And where a little terrace from its Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet bowers, friends again, Such as they were, when o'er the moun- With amaranth flowers, which, in the tain heather clime's despite, They wandered in their youth, through Filled the frore air with unaccustomed And after many years, for human things Such flowers, as in the wintry memory Change even like the ocean and the bloom Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb. Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould, Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led Into the peace of his dominion cold: She died among her kindred, being old. And know, that if love die not in the dead As in the living, none of mortal kind Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind. NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY He Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside till I found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or When he does touch on abstruse truth. human life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. never mentioned Love but he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed, on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could disclose the secret of all hearts; and his delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature. Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the baths of Lucca. JULIAN AND MADDALO A CONVERSATION PREFACE The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring, Are saturated not-nor Love with tears. VIRGIL'S Gallus. COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud : he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentered and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries. His Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world, he is for ever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather serious. Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind: the unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart. And such was this wide ocean, and this The sense that he was greater than his shore kind More barren than its billows; and yet Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind more Than all, with a remembered friend I By gazing on its own exceeding light. Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight, love To ride as then I rode;-for the winds drove The living spray along the sunny air Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare, Stripped to their depths by the awaken ing north; Over the horizon of the mountains ;Oh, How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! And, from the waves, sound like delight Thy mountains, seas and vineyards and broke forth Harmonising with solitude, and sent Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, But flew from brain to brain; such glee was ours, the towers Of cities they encircle !—it was ours To stand on thee, beholding it; and then, Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men Were waiting for us with the gondola.— As those who pause on some delightful way Charged with light memories of remem- Tho' bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we bered hours, came stood None slow enough for sadness: till we Looking upon the evening, and the flood Which lay between the city and the shore Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. This day had been cheerful but cold, and now The sun was sinking, and the wind also. Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be Talk interrupted with such raillery As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn Was roofed with clouds of rich emThe thoughts it would extinguish : 'twas forlorn, Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell, We descanted, and I (for ever still blazonry Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep West into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills: they were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear Made my companion take the darkerside. | As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles The likeness of a clump of peaked islesAnd then, as if the Earth and Sea had been Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," Said Maddalo, "and ever at this hour Dissolved into one lake of fire, were Those who may cross the water, hear Those mountains towering as from waves Which calls the maniacs each one Said my companion, "I will show you You talk as in years past," said Mad I looked, and saw between us and the Our thoughts and our desires to meet sun A building on an island; such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile, below Round the rent heart and pray-as madmen do A windowless, deformed and dreary For what? they know not, till the pile; night of death And on the top an open tower, where As sunset that strange vision, severeth Our memory from itself, and us from hung A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung; We could just hear its hoarse and iron all We sought and yet were baffled." I recall The sense of what he said, altho' I mar The broad sun sunk behind it, and it The force of his expressions. The broad tongue : tolled In strong and black relief." What we Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the behold star hill, |
