And then she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, Was as a green and overarching bower Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. LXX Could make that spirit mingle with her For on the night when they were buried, Which dear Adonis had been doomed And there the body lay, age after age, Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage, With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage Of death or life; while they were still arraying In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind Before she stooped to kiss Endymion, | And fleeting generations of mankind. Than now this lady-like a sexless bee Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none, Among those mortal forms, the wizardmaiden Past with an eye serene and heart unladen. LXIX To those she saw most beautiful, she gave Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, And lived thenceforward as if some control, Mightier than life, were in them; and LXXII And she would write strange dreams upon the brain Of those who were less beautiful, and make All harsh and crooked purposes more vain Than in the desert is the serpent's wake Which the sand covers,-all his evil gain The miser in such dreams would rise and shake Into a beggar's lap;-the lying scribe Would his own lies betray without a bribe. LXXIII Of such, when death oppressed the The priests would write an explanation Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the god Apis really was a bull, And nothing more; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; The old cant down; they licensed And when next day the maiden and the NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY WE spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from These baths were of great use to Pisa. Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino-a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas. This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes-wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested. The surpassing excellence of The Cenci had made me greatly desire that Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and dreamy spirit of the Witch of Atlas. It was not only that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own resources, and on the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because his mind overflowed, without the hope of I had not the most being appreciated. distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspirations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of the many; but I felt sure that, his poems were more addressed to the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the day would be acknowledged, and that popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues, which in those days it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious calumnies That he felt these and insulting abuse. things deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a few unfinished verses that showed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following: "Alas! this is not what I thought Life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass The hearts of others.. And, when I went among my kind, with triple brass To bear scorn, fear, and hate--a woful mass!" Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from pourtraying human passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine or paly twi light, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of the woods,-which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines, the flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds which Nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which form the Witch of Atlas: it is a brilliant congregation of ideas such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much loved. CEDIPUS TYRANNUS OR SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC "Choose Reform or civil war, When thro' thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a KING with hogs, Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR. ADVERTISEMENT THIS Tragedy is one of a triad, or system of three Plays (an arrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect their dramatic representations), elucidating the wonderful and appalling fortunes of the SWELLFOOT dynasty. It was evidently written by some learned Theban, and, from its characteristic dulness, apparently before the duties on the importation of Attic salt had been repealed by the Bootarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the PIGS proves him to have been a sus Baotia; possibly Epicuri de grege porcus; for, as the poet observes, "A fellow feeling makes us wond'rous kind." No liberty has been taken with the [Hecontemplates himself with satisfaction. Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze, And these most sacred nether promontories Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid, (Nor with less toil were their foundations laid,1) Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain, That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing! Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors, Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers, Bishops and deacons, and the entire army Of those fat martyrs to the persecution Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils, Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres Of their Eleusis, hail! The Swine. Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh! Swellfoot. Ha! what are ye, Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies, Cling round this sacred shrine? Swine. Aigh! aigh! aigh! Ever propitiate her reluctant will Swine. Ugh! ugh! ugh! From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather, 1 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants. Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you? The Swine.-Semichorus I. If 'twere your kingly will I have heard your Laureate sing, Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew, And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too, But now our styes are fallen in, we catch The murrain and the mange, the scab |