NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY MRS. SHELLEY
THE very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had approached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year. The Revolt of Islam, written and printed, was a great effort-Rosalind and Helen was begun-and the fragments and poems I can trace to the same period show how full of passion and reflection were his solitary hours.
In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, and desire to trace its workings.
He projected also translating the Hymns of Homer; his version of several of the
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose shorter ones remains, as well as that to
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions
Mercury already published in the Posthumous Poems. His readings this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the Hymns Dramas of Eschylus and Sophocles, the of Homer and the Iliad, he read the Symposium of Plato, and Arrian's Historia Indica. In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In English, the Bible was his The hand that mocked them and the constant study; he read a great portion of
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
it aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings I find also mentioned the Faerie Queen; and other modern works, the production of his contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and Byron.
His life was now spent more in thought than action-he had lost the eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was far from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy or politics or taste were the subjects of con
over his wrongs and woes, and was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncontrollable emotions of his heart. I ought to observe that the fourth verse of this effusion is introduced in Rosalind and Helen. When afterwards this child died at Rome, he wrote, apropos of the English burying-ground in that city: "This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death. My beloved child lies buried here. I envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other crushes the
versation. He was playful; and indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others not in bitterness, but in sport. The author of Nightmare Abbey seized on some points of his character and some habits of his life when he painted Scythrop. He was not addicted to "port or madeira," but in youth he had read of Illuminati and Eleutherarchs," and believed that he possessed the power of operating an im- mediate change in the minds of men and the state of society. These wild dreams had faded; sorrow and adversity had struck home; but he struggled with de- spondency as he did with physical pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats, and watching the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness-or re-affections." peating with wild energy The Ancient Mariner, and Southey's Old Woman of Berkeley; but those who do will recol- lect that it was in such, and in the crea- tions of his own fancy when that was most daring and ideal, that he sheltered himself from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life.
MONTH after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Æthiopian dells, And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles Where Frost and Heat in strange
No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were torn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the passing of the decree, he had written a curse, On Atlas, fields of moist snow half in which there breathes, besides haughty
By Nile's aerial urn, with rapid spells Urging those waters to their mighty end. O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are
indignation, all the tenderness of a father's Girt there with blasts and meteors love, which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences. At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment
he feared that our infant son would be
torn from us. He did not hesitate to resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything, and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, whom after
wards we lost at Rome, written under the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve him. This
poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded
And they are thine O Nile-and well
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.
Beware O Man-for knowledge must to thee
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.
PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES
LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's As twilight to the western star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.
O Mary dear, that you were here; The Castle echo whispers "Here!"
MANY a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track; Whilst above the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily, And behind the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, Riving sail, and cord, and plank, Till the ship has almost drank Death from the o'er-brimming deep; And sinks down, down, like that sleep When the dreamer seems to be Weltering through eternity;
And the dim low line before Of a dark and distant shore Still recedes, as ever still Longing with divided will, But no power to seek or shun, He is ever drifted on O'er the unreposing wave To the haven of the grave. What, if there no friends will greet; What, if there no heart will meet His with love's impatient beat; Wander wheresoe'er he may, Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress
In friendship's smile, in love's caress? Then 'twill wreak him little woe Whether such there be or no: Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold; Bloodless are the veins and chill Which the pulse of pain did fill; Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December's bough. On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap,
One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, Where a few gray rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: Nor is heard one voice of wail But the sea-mews, as they sail O'er the billows of the gale; Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town, When a king in glory rides Through the pomp of fratricides: Those unburied bones around There is many a mournful sound; There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim,
Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves nor murmurs not.
Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide Agony : To such a one this morn was led, My bark by soft winds piloted : 'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the pæan,
With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Thro' the dewy mist they soar
Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky,
So their plumes of purple grain, Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes On the morning's fitful gale Thro' the broken mist they sail, And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill.
Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath day's azure eyes Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt City, thou has been Ocean's child, and then his queen ; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier.
A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne, among the waves Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters of his path.
Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aërial gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres, where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered, and now mouldering: But if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime; If not, perish thou and they, Clouds which stain truth's rising day By her sun consumed away,
Earth can spare ye: while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring With more kindly blossoming. Perish-let there only be Floating o'er thy hearthless sea As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan;- That a tempest-cleaving Swan Of the songs of Albion,
Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit Chastening terror :—what though yet Poesy's unfailing River,
Which thro' Albion winds for ever Lashing with melodious wave Many a sacred Poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled? What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay Aught thine own? oh, rather say Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul? As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs; As divinest Shakespere's might Fills Avon and the world with light Like omniscient power which he Imaged 'mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch's urn, Yet amid yon hills doth burn, A quenchless lamp by which the heart Sees things unearthly ;-so thou art Mighty spirit-so shall be
The City that did refuge thee.
Lo, the sun floats up the sky Like thought-winged Liberty, Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height; From the sea a mist has spread,
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