The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep: Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows; Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep. Thou in the grave shalt rest-yet till the phantoms flee Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile, Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile. TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN I MINE eyes were dim with tears unshed; Yes, I was firm-thus wert not thou ;My baffled looks did fear yet dread To meet thy looks-I could not know How anxiously they sought to shine With soothing pity upon mine. II To sit and curb the soul's mute rage Of fettered grief that dares not groan, III Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, IV Upon my heart thy accents sweet Of peace and pity fell like dew On flowers half dead ;-thy lips did meet Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw Their soft persuasion on my brain, Charming away its dream of pain. V We are not happy, sweet! our state Is strange and full of doubt and fear; More need of words that ills abate;— Reserve or censure come not near VI MUTABILITY WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings And the billows of cloud that around thee roll Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny. This world is the nurse of all we know, Give various response to each varying When all that we know, or feel, or see, blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last. We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow, morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability. ON DEATH THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOW- Ecclesiastes. THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile A SUMMER EVENING CHURCH O man! hold thee on in courage of soul In duskier braids around the languid Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, eyes of day: Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the sea; Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. TO COLERIDGE ΔΑΚΡΥΣΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΠΟΤΜΟΝ 'ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ Oh! THERE are spirits of the air, And genii of the evening breeze, As star-beams among twilight trees :- The winds are still, or the dry church- With mountain winds, and babbling tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. Thou too, aërial Pile! whose pinnacles Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, And thou hast sought in starry eyes Around whose lessening and invisible Another's wealth :-tame sacrifice height To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? Gather among the stars the clouds of Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands? night. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrill- Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine ing sound Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around, hope On the false earth's inconstancy? Of love, or moving thoughts to thee? And mingling with the still night and Could steal the power to wind thee in That loveliest dreams perpetual watch This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever did keep. Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, A Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie Where the bitter breath of the naked sky Might visit thee at will. recovered from a severe pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near Windsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the water, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY he had chiefly aimed at extending his MRS. SHELLEY THE remainder of Shelley's Poems will be arranged in the order in which they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside, and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess, by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed together at the end. political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in prose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way for better things. In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814 and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero, a large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton's Poems, Wordsworth's Excursion, Southey's Madoc and Thalaba, Locke On the Human Understanding, Bacon's Novum Organum. In Italian, Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the Réveries d'un Solitaire of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travels. He read few novels. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816 THE SUNSET THERE late was One within whose subtle being, The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as Early Poems, the greater part were published with Alastor; some of them were written previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning "Oh, there are spirits in the air" was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well. He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth. The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in 1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more tranquilly First than the summer of 1815. He had just As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and death contended. None The sweetness of the joy which made may know his breath Fail, like the trances of the summer air, When, with the Lady of his love, who then knew the unreserve of mingled being, |