And through his sleep, and o’er each Wrought in his brain and bosom separate waking hour,

strise. Thoughts after thoughts, unresting mul. Some said that he was mad, others titudes,

believed

saw

Were driven within him, by some secret That memories of an antenatal life power,

Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal Which bade them blaze, and live, and

hell; roll afar,

And others said that such mysterious Like lights and sounds, from haunted

grief tower to tower

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, O'er castled mountains borne, when

fell tempest's war

On souls like his which owned no higher Is levied by the night-contending winds,

law And the pale dalesmen watch with eager Than love; love calm, steadfast, invinear;

cible Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends

By mortal fear or supernatural awe; Which wake and feed on everliving

And others, "'Tis the shadow of a

dream woe, What was this grief, which ne'er in other which the veiled eye of memory never

minds A mirror found,- he knew not-none

“But through the soul's abyss, like could know;

some dark stream But on whoe'er might question him he Through shattered mines and caverns turned

underground The light of his frank eyes, as if to show, Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no

beam He knew not of the grief within that burned,

“Of joy may rise, but it is quenched But asked forbearance with a mournsul

and drowned

In the dim whirlpools of this dream Or spoke in words from which none obscure, ever learned

Soon its exhausted waters will have found The cause of his disquietude; or shook "A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, With spasms of silent passion; or turned o Athanase !—in one so good and great, pale :

Evil or tumult cannot long endure." So that his friends soon rarely undertook To stir his secret pain without avail;

So spake they: idly of another's state For all who knew and loved him then Babbling vain words and fond philoperceived

sophy; That there was drawn an adamantine

This was their consolation; such debate veil

Men held with one another; nor did he Between his heart and mind, both un. Like one who labours with a human woe relieved

Decline this talk : as if its theme might be

look;

so he

Another, not himself, he to and fro A fertile island in the barren sea, Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest One mariner who has survived his mates wit,

Many a drear month in a great shipAnd none but those who loved him best could know

With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet That which he knew not, how it galled

debates and bit

Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely His weary mind, this converse vain and

being : cold;

" The mind becomes that which it conFor like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit

templates,”Upon his being; a snake which fold by And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing fold

Their bright creations, grew like wisest Pressed out the life of life, a clinging

fiend Which clenched him if he stirred with And when he heard the crash of nations

fleeing deadlier hold; And so his grief remained— let it remain A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins --untold. 1

then,

O sacred Hellas! many weary years PART II

He wandered, till the path of Laian's

glen

men;

FRAGMENT I

PRINCE ATHANASE had one beloved

Was grass-grown--and the unremem

bered tears friend, An old, old man, with hair of silver Were dry in Laian for their honoured white,

chief, And lips where heavenly smiles would Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem hang and blend

spears : With his wise words; and

And as the lady looked with faithful eyes whose

grief arrowy light Shone like the reflex of a thousand

From her high lattice o'er the rugged minds.

path, He was the last whom superstition's

Where she once saw that horseman toil,

with brief blight Had spared in Greece—the blight that And blighting hope, who with the news

of death cramps and blinds,And in his olive bower at noe

Struck body and soul as with a mortal Had sate from earliest youth. Like one

blight, who finds

She saw beneath the chestnuts, far be

neath, 1 The Author was pursuing a suller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refine- An old man toiling up, a weary wight; ment and analysis, his conceptions might be And soon within her hospitable hall betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. She saw his white hairs glittering in the The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by the difference. (Shelley's Note.)

light

fall;

Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of

war, And his wan visage and his withered | The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,

mien Yet calm and gentle and majestical. Hanging upon the peaked wave asar,

Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret And Athanase, her child, who must have

gleam, been

Piercing the stormy darkness like a star, Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed

Which pours beyond the sea one stead. In patient silence.

fast beam,

Whilst all the constellations of the sky FRAGMENT II

Seemed reeling through the storm. They

did but seemSuch was Zonoras; and as daylight finds One amaranth glittering on the path of

For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone frost,

by, When autumn nights have nipt all And bright Arcturus through yon pines weaker kinds,

is glowing, Thus through his age, dark, cold, and And far o'er southern waves, immovably

tempest-tost. Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled Belted Orion hangs—warm light is flowFrom fountains pure, nigh overgrown From the young moon into the sunset's

ing and lost,

chasm. The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child, “O, summer eve! with power divine, With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore bestowing And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.

“On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm And sweet and subtle talk they evermore, Which overflows in notes of liquid gladThe pupil and the master shared; until,

ness, Sharing that undiminishable store, Filling the sky like light! Ilow many

a spasm The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill Outrun the winds that chase them, soon “Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief

and madness, His teacher, and did teach with native Were lulled by thee, delightful nightinskill

gale! Strange truths and new to that experi- | And these soft waves, murmuring a enced man;

gentle sadness, Still they were friends, as few have ever

“And the far sighings of yon piny dale been

Made vocal by some wind, we feel not Who mark the extremes of life's dis

here,

I bear alone what nothing may avail So in the caverns of the forest green,

“ To lighten--a strange load !” – No Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,

human car Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen Heard this lament; but o'er the visage By summer woodmen; and when winter's

Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere

outran

cordant span.

wan

man

serene :

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran, To see it rise thus joyous from its Like wind upon some forest - bosom'd dreams, lake,

The fresh and radiant Earth. The Glassy and dark.–And that divine old hoary grove

Waxed green-and flowers burst forth

like starry beams;Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake,

The grass in the warm sun did start and Even where its inmost depths were

move, gloomiest

And sea-buds burst beneath the waves And with a calm and measured voice he spake,

How many a one, though none be near

to love, And with a soft and equal pressure, prest That cold lean hand :- .“ Dost thou Loves then the shade of his own soul, remember yet

half seen When the curved moon then lingering In any mirror or the spring's young in the west

minions,

The winged leaves amid the copses “ Paused in yon waves her mighty horns

green; to wet,

How How in those beams we walked, half

many a spirit then puts on the

pinions resting on the sea ?

Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast, 'Tis just one year-sure thou dost not

And his own steps--and over wide forget

dominions " Then Plato's words of light in thee

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far

and fast, Lingered like moonlight in the moonless More fleet than storms-the wide world east,

shrinks below, For we had just then read-thy memory When winter and despondency are past. “ Is faithful now—the story of the feast; 'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase And Agathon and Diotima seemed

Past the white Alps—those eagle-baffling From death and dark forgetsulness re

mountains leased.

Slept in their shrouds of snow ;—beside FRAGMENT III 'Twas at the season when the Earth | The waterfalls were voiceless— for their upsprings

fountains From slumber, as a sphered angel's child, Were changed to mines of sunless crystal Shadowing its eyes with green and golden

now, wings,

Or by the curdling winds—like brazen

wings Stands up before its mother bright and mild,

Which clanged along the mountain's of whose soft voice the air expectant

marble brow

Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung So stood before the sun, which shone And filled with frozen light the chasm and smiled

and me

the ways

wear

FRAGMENT IV

The light from them, as when tears of Thou art the wine whose drunkenness delight is all

Double the western planet's serene flame. We can desire, O Love! and happy souls, Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,

ROSALIND AND HELEN Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls

A MODERN ECLOGUE Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew ;

ADVERTISEMENT Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls

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 calblue

culated to excite profound meditation ; Thou fillest them; and when the earth and if, by interesting the affections and is fair

amusing the imagination, it awaken a The shadow of thy moving wings imbue certain ideal melancholy favourable to the

reception of more important impressions, Its deserts and its mountains, till they it will produce in the reader all that the

writer experienced in the composition. I Beauty like some bright robe; - thou resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse

of the feelings which moulded the conever soarest Among the towers of men, and as soft air ception of the story ; and this impulse

determined the pauses of a measure, In spring, which moves the unawakened which only pretends to be regular inasforest,

much as it corresponds with, and expresses,

the irregularity of the imaginations which Clothing with leaves its branches bare

inspired it. and bleak,

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. That which from thee they should im- after a day's excursion among those lovely

One, which I sent from Italy, was written plore:--the weak

mountains which surround what was once Alone kneel to thee, offering up the the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, hearts

of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to The strong have broken-yet where condemn the insertion of the introductory shall any seek

lines, which image forth the sudden relief

of a state of deep despondency by the A garment whom thou clothest not?

radiant visions disclosed by the sudden

burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn on ANOTHER FRAGMENT

the highest peak of those delightful mounHer hair was brown, her sphered eyes they were not erased at the request of a

tains, I can only offer as my cxcuse, that were brown,

dear friend, with whom added years of And in their dark and liquid moisture intercourse only add to my apprehension swam,

of its value, and who would have had Like the dim orb of the eclipsèd moon; more right than any one to complain, Yet when the spirit flashed beneath,

1 “Lines written among the Euganean Hills." there came

Ed.