66 wind ; source And the stars we miss this morn will light With a bottle in one hand, More willingly our return to-night. llow it whistles, Dominic's long Lionel stood when Melchior brought As if his very soul were at a stand, black hair ! him steady : List my dear fellow; the breeze " Sit at the helm--fasten this sheetblows fair : all ready!” Hear how it sings into the air." “ Of us and of our lazy motions," The chain is loosed, the sails are Impatiently said Melchior, spread, If I can guess a boat's emotions ; The living breath is fresh behind, And how we ought, two hours As with dew's and sunrise fed, before, Comes the laughing morning To have been the devil knows where." The sails are full, the boat makes And then, in such transalpine head Tuscan Against the Serchio's torrent fierce, As would have killed a Della Then flags with intermitting course, Cruscan, And hangs upon the wave, and stems The tempest of the So, Lionel according to his art Which fervid from its mountain Weaving his idle words, Melchior said : “ She dreams that we are not yet out Shallow, smooth and strong doth of bed ; come, We'll put a soul into her, and a heart Swift as fire, tempestuously Which like a dove chased by a dove It sweeps into the affrighted sea ; shall beat." In morning's smile its eddies coil, Torturing all its quiet light The Serchio, twisting forth locker." Between the marble barriers which it “Would not this keg be best a little clove lowered ?" At Ripafratta, leads through the · No, now all's right." « Those bottles dread chasm of warm tea The wave that died the death which (Give me some straw)-must be stowed lovers love, tenderly ; Living in what it sought; as if this Such as we used, in summer after six, spasm To cram in greatcoat pockets, and to Iad not yet past, the toppling mounmix tains cling, Iları eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton, But the clear stream in full enthusiasm And, couched on stolen hay in those Pours itself on the plain, then wandering green harlours Down one clear path of effluence Farmers called gaps, and we schoolboys crystalline, called arbours, Sends its superfluous waves, that they Would feast till eight." may fing 66 you, but] At Arno's feet tribute of corn and SONNET TO BYRON wine, [I Am afraid these verses will not please Then, through the pestilential deserts wild Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and pine, It rushes to the Ocean. Despair The mind which, like a worm whose life may share your creations rise as fast and fair I PANT for the music which is divine, As perfect worlds at the Creator's will. But such is my regard that nor your My heart in its thirst is a dying flower ; Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine, To soar above the heights where others power Loosen the notes in a silver shower ; Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain, Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn [climb], I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. hour Cast from the envious future on the time, Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet Move one regret for his unhonoured sound, Who dares these words :- the worm More, oh more, -I am thirsting yet, beneath the sod It loosens the serpent which care has May list itself in homage of the God. bound Upon my heart to stifle it ; The dissolving strain, through every FRAGMENT ON KEATS, vein, WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB Passes into my heart and brain. SHOULD BE INSCRIBED II name III was lake ; • HERE lieth One whose name As the scent of a violet withered up, writ on water." Which grew by the brink of a silver But, ere the breath that could erase it blew, When the hot noon has drained its dewy Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter, сир, Death, the immortalising winter, flew And mist there was none its thirst to Athwart the stream, - and time's slake printless torrent grew And the violet lay dead while the odour A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name flew Of Adonais. On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue FRAGMENT : · METHOUGHT I WAS A BILLOW IN THE As one who drinks from a charmed cup CROWD" Of foaming, and sparkling and murmuring wine, METHOUGHT I was a billow in the crowd Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, Of common men, that stream without Invites to love with her kiss divine. a shore, IV That ocean which at once is deaf and FRAGMENT: “I FAINT, I PERISH loud ; WITH MY LOVE!” That I, a man, stood amid many more By a wayside. which the aspect I FAINT, I perish with my love! I grow bore Frail as a cloud whose (splendours) Of some imperial metropolis, pale Where mighty shapes — pyramid, Under the evening's ever-changing glow: dome, and tower I die like mist upon the gale, Gleamed like a pile of crags. And like a wave under the calm I fail. The babe is at peace within the womb, We begin in what we end. WHEN soft winds and sunny skies prey. I wear; FRAGMENT : “AND Who wander o'er the paradise of same, THAT I In sacred dedication ever grew : WALK THUS PROUDLY One of the crowd thou art without a CROWNED” name." AND that I walk thus proudly crowned “Ah, friend, 'tis the false laurel that withal Is that 't is my distinction; if I fall, Bright though it seem, it is not the same I shall not weep out of the vital day, As that which bound Milton's im. To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay. mortal hair; Its dew is poison and the hopes that quicken FRAGMENT: “THE RUDE Under its chilling shade, though seemWIND IS SINGING” ing fair, Are flowers which die almost before they sicken.” NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821, BY MRS. SHELLEY My task becomes inexpressibly painful FRAGMENT : “GREAT SPIRIT” as the year draws near that which sealed GREAT Spirit whom the sea of boundless our earthly fate, and each poem, and each thought event it records, has a real or mysterious Nurtures within its unimagined caves, feel that I am incapable of putting on connection with the fatal catastrophe. I In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind, paper the history of those times. The Giving a voice to its mysterious waves, heart of the man, abhorred of the poet, who could peep and botanise Upon his mother's grave,' does not appear to me more inexplicably framed than that of one who can dissect O thou immortal deity and probe past woes, and repeat to the Whose throne is in the depth of human public ear the groans drawn from them in thought, the throes of their agony. I do adjure thy power and thee The year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at We were not, By all that man may be, by all that he the Baths of San Giuliano. as our wont had been, alone; friends had By allthat he has been and yet must be! and, when Memory recurs to the past, she gathered round us. Nearly all are dead, wanders among tombs. The genius, with FRAGMENT: FALSE LAURELS all his blighting errors and mighty powers; AND TRUE the companion of Shelley's ocean-wander ings, and the sharer of his fate, than whom ** What art thou, Presumptuous, who no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and fearless, and others, who found in profanest The wreath to mighty poets only due, ledge and warm sympathy, delight, in Shelley's society, and in his great knowEven whilst like a forgotten moon thou struction, and solace ; have joined him wanest? beyond the grave, A few survive who Touch not those leaves which for the have felt life a desert since he left it. eternal few What misfortune equal death? is not, can Change can convert every other into a upset; a wetting was all the harm done, blessing, or heal its sting --death alone except that the intense cold of his drenched has no cure. It shakes the foundations clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went of the earth on which we tread; it destroys down with him to the mouth of the Arno, its beauty ; it casts down our shelter ; it where the stream, then high and swift, exposes us bare to desolation, When met the tideless sea, and disturbed its those we love have passed into eternity, sluggish waters. It was a waste and “ life is the desert and the solitude" in dreary scene; the desert sand stretched which we are forced to linger-but never into a point surrounded by waves that find comfort more. broke idly though perpetually around; it There is much in the Adonais which was a scene very similar to Lido, of which seems now more applicable to Shelley he had said, himself than to the young and gifted poet "I love all waste whom he mourned. The poetic view he And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see takes of death, and the lofty scorn he Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be : displays towards his calumniators, are as And such was this wide ocean, and this shore More barren than its billows." a prophecy on his own destiny when received among immortal names, and the Our little boat was of greater use, unpoisonous breath of critics has vanished accompanied by any danger, when we into emptiness before the same he inherits. removed to the Baths. Some friends Shelley's favourite taste was boating: lived at the village of Pugnano, four miles when living near the Thames or by the off, and we went to and fro to see them, Lake of Geneva, much of his life was in our boat, by the canal; which, fed by spent on the water. On the shore of the Serchio, was, though an artificial, a every lake or stream or sea near which he full and picturesque stream, making its dwelt, he had a boat moored. He had way under verdant banks, sheltered by latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There trees that dipped their boughs into the are no pleasure-boats on the Arno; and murmuring waters. By day, multitudes the shallowness of its waters (except in of ephemera darted to and fro on the winter-time, when the stream is ioo turbid surface; at night, the fireflies came out and impetuous for boating) rendered it among the shrubs on the banks; the difficult to get any skiff light enough to cicale at noonday kept up their hum; the float. Shelley, however, overcame the diffi- aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was culty; he, together with a friend, contrived a pleasant summer, bright in all but a boat such as the huntsmen carry about Shelley's health and inconstant spirits; with them in the Maremma, to cross the yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became sluggish but deep streams that intersect more and more attached to the part of the the forests, -a boat of laths and pitched country where chance appeared io cast us. It held three persons; and he Sometimes he projected taking a farm was often seen on the Arno in it, to the situated on the height of one of the near horror of the Italians, who remonstrated hills, surrounded by chestnut and pine on the danger, and could not understand woods, and overlooking a wide extent of how any one could take pleasure in an country: or settling still farther in the exercise that risked life. "Ma va per la maritime Apennines, at Massa. Several vita !" they exclaimed. I little thought of his slighter and unfinished poems were how true their words would prove. He inspired by these scenes, and by the comonce ventured, with a friend, on the glassy panions around us. It is the nature of sea of a calm day, down the Arno and that poetry, however, which overflows from round the coast to Leghorn, which, by the soul oftener to express sorrow and keeping close in shore, was very practi- regret than joy; for it is when oppressed cable. They returned to Pisa by the canal, by the weight of life, and away from those when, missing the direct cui, they got he loves, that the poet has recourse to the entangled among weeds, and the boat solace of expression in verse, canvas. |
