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Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams by others, yet the effect of the whole was

call,

Plunging into the vale-it is the blast
Descending on the pines-the torrents

pour.

FRAGMENT: HOME

DEAR home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,

The least of which wronged Memory ever makes

fascinating and delightful.

Mont Blanc was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following mention of this poem in his publication of Letters from Switserland: "The poem the History of Six Weeks' Tour, and author of the two letters from Chamouni entitled Mont Blanc is written by the and Vevai. It was composed under the

Bitterer than all thine unremembered immediate impression of the deep and

tears.

FRAGMENT: HELEN AND

HENRY

A SHOVEL of his ashes took
From the hearth's obscurest nook,
Muttering mysteries as she went.
Helen and Henry knew that Granny
Was as much afraid of ghosts as any,

And so they followed hard—
But Helen clung to her brother's arm,
And her own spasm made her shake.

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816, BY

MRS. SHELLEY

SHELLEY wrote little during this year. The poem entitled The Sunset was written in the Spring of the year, while still residing at Bishopgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty was conceived during his voyage round the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by reading the Nouvelle Héloïse for the first time. The reading it on the very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and earnest enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposition; and, though differing in many of the views and shocked

powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang."

In

He

This was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual. the list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theocritus, the Prometheus of Æschylus, several of Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, Pliny's Letters, the Annals and Germany of Tacitus. In French, the History of the French Revolution by Lacretelle. read for the first time, this year, Montaigne's Essays, and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful and instructive books in the world. scanty in English works: Locke's Essay, The list is Political Justice, and Coleridge's Lay Sermon, form nearly the whole. his frequent habit to read aloud to me in It was the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New Testament, Paradise Lost, Spenser's Faery Queen, and Don Quixote.

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817

MARIANNE'S DREAM

I

A PALE dream came to a Lady fair, And said, A boon, a boon, I pray! I know the secrets of the air,

And things are lost in the glare of day,

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The Lady grew sick with a weight of Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent

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XII

Sudden, from out that city sprung

A light that made the earth grow red; Two flames that each with quivering tongue

Licked its high domes, and overhead
Among those mighty towers and fanes
Dropped fire, as a volcano rains
Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.

XIII

And hark! a rush as if the deep

Had burst its bonds; she looked behind

And saw over the western steep

A raging flood descend, and wind Through that wide vale; she felt no fear, But said within herself, 'Tis clear

XVII

At last her plank an eddy crost,

And bore her to the city's wall,
Which now the flood had reached almost;
It might the stoutest heart appal
To hear the fire roar and hiss
Through the domes of those mighty
palaces.

XVIII

The eddy whirled her round and round
Before a gorgeous gate, which stood
Piercing the clouds of smoke which
bound

Its aëry arch with light like blood;
She looked on that gate of marble clear,
With wonder that extinguished fear.

XIX

These towers are Nature's own, and she For it was filled with sculptures rarest,

To save them has sent forth the sea.

XIV

And now those raging billows came

Where that fair Lady sate, and she
Was borne towards the showering flame
By the wild waves heaped tumultu-
ously

And on a little plank, the flow
Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.

XV

The flames were fiercely vomited

From every tower and every dome, And dreary light did widely shed

Of forms most beautiful and strange, Like nothing human, but the fairest

Of winged shapes, whose legions range Throughout the sleep of those that are, Like this same Lady, good and fair.

XX

And as she looked, still lovelier grew
Those marble forms;-the sculptor

sure

Was a strong spirit, and the hue

Of his own mind did there endure After the touch, whose power had braided

O'er that vast flood's suspended foam, Such grace, was in some sad change

Beneath the smoke which hung its night
On the stained cope of heaven's light.

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Grew tranquil as a woodland river

Winding through hills in solitude;

Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver,

Of the drowning mountains, in and And their fair limbs to float in motion,

As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind

out,

sails

Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.

XXII

While the flood was filling those hollow And their lips moved; one seemed to

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Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, The blood and life within those snowy

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Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, On which, like one in trance upborne,

but not forget!

II

A breathless awe, like the swift change Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers, Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,

Thou breathest now in fast ascending

numbers.

The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven

By the enchantment of thy strain, And on my shoulders wings are woven, To follow its sublime career, Beyond the mighty moons that wane

Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep, Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.

Now 'tis the breath of summer night, Which when the starry waters sleep, Round western isles, with incenseblossoms bright,

Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.

TO CONSTANTIA

I

THE rose that drinks the fountain dew In the pleasant air of noon,

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