And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour, Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes, Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad, others believed Were driven within him, by some secret That memories of an antenatal life Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend A fertile island in the barren sea, With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being: "The mind becomes that which it contemplates," And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing Their bright creations, grew like wisest men; Which clenched him if he stirred with And when he heard the crash of nations deadlier hold;— fleeing And so his grief remained—let it remain A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins -untold.1 then, Had spared in Greece-the blight that And blighting hope, who with the news cramps and blinds, And in his olive bower at Enoe Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds 1 The Author was pursuing a fuller develop ment of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by the difference. [Shelley's Note.] of death Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, She saw beneath the chestnuts, far beneath, An old man toiling up, a weary wight; Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of fall; war, And his wan visage and his withered The Balearic fisher, driven from shore, Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm "Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness, His teacher, and did teach with native Were lulled by thee, delightful nightin skill Strange truths and new to that experi enced man; Still they were friends, as few have ever been Who mark the extremes of life's dis cordant span. So in the caverns of the forest green, roar "Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea? many a spirit then puts on the pinions 'Tis just one year-sure thou dost not And his own steps-and over wide Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast, forget dominions 'TWAS at the season when the Earth The waterfalls were voiceless--for their Or by the curdling winds-like brazen wings Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung So stood before the sun, which shone And filled with frozen light the chasm THE story of Rosalind and Helen" is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest Investest it; and when the heavens are style of poetry. It is in no degree cal blue culated to excite profound meditation; Thou fillest them; and when the earth and if, by interesting the affections and is fair The shadow of thy moving wings imbue Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear Beauty like some bright robe;— thou ever soarest Among the towers of men, and as soft air In spring, which moves the unawakened forest, Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak, I amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it. I do not know which of the few scattered Thou floatest among men; and aye im- poems I left in England will be selected plorest by my bookseller to add to this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, 1 "Lines written among the Euganean Hills." Ed. |