Still, Shelley's passion was the ocean; and he wished that our summers, instead of being passed among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on the shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a spot. We shrank from Naples from a fear that the heats would disagree with Percy: Leghorn had lost its only attraction, since our friends who had resided there were returned to England; and, Monte Nero being the resort of many English, we did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a colony

Wept o'er the beauty, which like sea retiring,

of chance travellers. No one then thought it possible to reside at Via Reggio, which latterly has become a summer resort. The low lands and bad air of Maremma stretch the whole length of the western shores of the Mediterranean, till broken by the rocks and hills of Spezia. It was a vague idea, but Shelley suggested an excursion to Of my lorn heart, and o'er the grass and Spezia, to see whether it would be feasible to spend a summer there. The beauty of the bay enchanted him. We saw no house to suit us; but the notion took root, and many circumstances, enchained as by fatality, occurred to urge him to execute it.

Had left the earth bare as the waveworn sand

He looked forward this autumn with great pleasure to the prospect of a visit from Leigh Hunt. When Shelley visited Lord Byron at Ravenna, the latter had suggested his coming out, together with the plan of a periodical work in which they should all join. Shelley saw a prospect of good for the fortunes of his friend, and pleasure in his society; and instantly exerted himself to have the plan executed. He did not intend himself joining in the work partly from pride, not wishing to have the air of acquiring readers for his poetry by associating it with the compositions of more popular writers; and also because he might feel shackled in the free expression of his opinions, if any friends to be compromised. By those opinions, carried even to their utmost extent, he wished to live and die, as being in his conviction not only true, but such as alone would conduce to the moral improvement and happiness of mankind. The sale of the work might meanwhile, either really or supposedly, be injured by the free expression of his thoughts; and And this evil he resolved to avoid.

were

As

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822

THE ZUCCA

I

SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring,

And infant Winter laughed upon the land

All cloudlessly and cold;-when I, desiring

More in this world than any understand,

flowers

Pale for the falsehood of the flattering
Hours.

II

Summer was dead, but I yet lived to

weep

The instability of all but weeping; And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep

I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.

Too happy Earth! over thy face shall

creep

The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping From unremembered dreams, shalt

see

No death divide thy immortality.

III

I loved-oh no, I mean not one of ye, Or any earthly one, though ye are dear

human heart to human heart may

be ;

I

loved, I know not what--but this low sphere

all that it contains, contains not thee,

Thou, whom seen nowhere, I feel Can blast not, but which pity kills; the everywhere. dew

From heaven and earth, and all that in Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too them are,

true.

Veiled art thou, like a

Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song
Mixed with the stringed melodies

that won it

To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,

Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.

XI

Had loosed his heart, and shook the
leaves and flowers

On which he wept, the while the
Savage storm

Waked by the darkest of December's

hours

Was raving round the chamber hushed

and warm;

The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,

The fish were frozen in the pools, the form

Of every summer plant was dead . . .
Whilst this...

PATIENT

I

"SLEEP, sleep on! forget thy pain;
My hand is on thy brow,
My spirit on thy brain;
My pity on thy heart, poor friend;
And from my fingers flow
The powers of life, and like a sign,

Seal thee from thine hour of woe;
And brood on thee, but may not blend
With thine.

II

"Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not;
But when I think that he
Who made and makes my lot
As full of flowers as thine of weeds,

Might have been lost like thee;
And that a hand which was not mine,
Might then have charmed his agony
As I another's--my heart bleeds
For thine.

III

"Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of

The dead and the unborn

Forget thy life and love;

Forget that thou must wake for ever;

Forget the world's dull scorn;
Forget lost health, and the divine
Feelings which died in youth's brief

morn;

And forget me, for I can never
Be thine.

"The spell is done. How feel you now?"
"Better-Quite well," replied
The sleeper."What would do

THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER You good when suffering and awake?

What cure your head and side?—" "What would cure, that would kill me,

Jane:

And as I must on earth abide
Awhile, yet tempt me not to break
My chain."

LINES: "WHEN THE LAMP IS

IV

"Like a cloud big with a May shower,
My soul weeps healing rain,
On thee, thou withered flower;
It breathes mute music on thy sleep;
Its odour calms thy brain;
Its light within thy gloomy breast

Spreads like a second youth again.
By mine thy being is to its deep
Possest.

V

SHATTERED"

I

WHEN the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.

When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;

When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

11

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,

The heart's echoes render

No song when the spirit is mute:-
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

III

When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest,

The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possest.
O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

IV

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high:

Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home

Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

For your cradle, your home, and your Reflection, you may come to-morrow,

bier?

Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,--
You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,-
I will pay you in the grave,-
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough;
Hope in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment's good
After long pain-with all your love,
This you never told me of."

TO JANE: THE INVITATION
BEST and brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn
To hoar February born;
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen
ains,

And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonises heart to heart.

I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor:-
"I am gone into the fields

To take what this sweet hour yields;

Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be,
And the sandhills of the sea;-
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
mount-When the night is left behind

In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous

Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.

Now the last day of many days,

All beautiful and bright as thou,

The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up to thy wonted work! come, trace

The epitaph of glory fled,—
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.

TO JANE: THE RECOLLECTION There seemed from the remotest seat

Of the white mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,-
A spirit interfused around,

A thrilling silent life,
To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal nature's strife;-
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there,

Was one fair form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.

II

We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep,

The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

III

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,

Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;

IV
How calm it was!-the silence there
By such a chain was bound

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,
Each seemed as 'twere a little sky
Gulphed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light,

Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day-
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighbouring
lawn,

And through the dark green wood The white sun twinkling like the dawn Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen,
Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast,
Its every leaf and lineament

With more than truth exprest;