Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

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

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend

A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates
Many a drear month in a great ship--
so he

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

[blocks in formation]

then,

[blocks in formation]

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;
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the
light

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,

[blocks in formation]

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,
Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen
By summer woodmen ; and when winter's

roar

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

"Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,

How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?

[blocks in formation]

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

[blocks in formation]

dominions

[blocks in formation]

'TWAS at the season when the Earth The waterfalls were voiceless--for their

[blocks in formation]

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

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

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

[blocks in formation]

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.

« PredošláPokračovať »