"SAD STORM WHOSE TEARS ARE VAIN, BARE WOODS WHOSE BRANCHES STAIN,

394

"WHEN HEARTS HAVE ONCE MINGLED-(PERCY B. SHELLEY)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

With thy clear keen joyance,

Languor cannot be :

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy note flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.*

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

* "Sad things, in this life of breath,

Are truest, saddest, sweetest."

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

LOVE FIRST LEAVES THE WELL-BUILT NEST."-SHELLEY.

DEEP CAVES AND DREARY MAIN, WAIT FOR THE WORLD'S WRONG!"-SHELLEY.

"HOW SWEET IT IS TO SIT AND READ THE TALES OF MIGHTY POETS, AND TO HEAR THE WHILE

66 WONDERFUL IS DEATH-DEATH AND HIS BROTHER SLEEP!

BEAUTY INEXPRESSIBLE.

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

395

[In the spring of 1820, says Mrs. Shelley, we (that is, herself and the poet) spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. "It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes where myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the Skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems." Of this exquisitely melodious and sensuous lyric, Leigh Hunt justly says, that in sweetness it is inferior only to Coleridge-in rapturous passion, to no man. "It is like the bird it sings-enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, continuous, and alonesmall, but filling the heavens. Notwithstanding Shakespeare's lark singing at heaven's gate,' the larger effusion of Shelley will be identified with thoughts of the bird hereafter, in the minds of all who are susceptible of its beauty."-LEIGH HUNT, Imagination and Fancy, p. 295.]

BEAUTY INEXPRESSIBLE.

WEET lamp! my moth-like muse has burnt its
wings;

Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
Young Love should teach Time in his own gray style
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile;
A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom?—a star
Which moves,not in the moving heavens, alone?
A smile amid dark frowns?-a gentle tone
Amid rude voices?—a beloved sight?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?

A lute which those whom Love has taught to play
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day,

AND DOVE-EYED PITY'S MURMURED PAIN."-PERCY B. SHelley.

SWEET MUSIC WHICH, WHEN THE ATTENTION FAILS, FILLS THE DIM PAUSE."-PERCY B. SHELLEY.

VICE IS DISCORD, WAR, AND MISERY; BUT VIRTUE

And lull fond grief asleep?—a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of woe? I measure

The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
And find-alas! mine own infirmity.......

See where she stands! a mortal shape indued
With love, and life, and light, and deity,
And motion which may change, but cannot die
An image of some bright Eternity;

;

A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour
Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender
Reflection on the eternal Moon of Love,
Under whose motions life's dull billows move;
A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;
A vision like incarnate April, warning,

With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy

Into his summer grave.

[From the " Epipsychidion -a poem to be read by every student who

would arrive at a just conception of the character and exaltation of Shelley's

genius.]

"FIRST OUR PLEASURES DIE, AND THEN OUR HOPES, AND THEN OUR FEARS, AND WHEN

These are DEAD THE DEBT IS DUE; DUST CLAIMS DUST, AND WE DIE TOO."-SHELLEY.

[This song, says Leigh Hunt, is a great favourite with musicians; and no wonder. Beaumont and Fletcher never wrote anything of the kind more lovely.]

IS PEACE, AND HAPPINESS, AND HARMONY."-SHELLEY.

"THE LOFTIEST STAR OF UNASCENDED HEAVEN PINNACLED DIM IN THE INTENSE INANE."-PERCY B. SHELLEY.

66

MUSIC ITSELF THE ECHO OF THE HEART."-PERCY B. SHELLEY.

Sustained itself with terror
and with toil

Over a gulf, and with the
agony

With which it clings seems

slowly coming down;
Even as a wretched soul,
hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life;

yet, clinging, leans;
And, leaning, makes more
dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall. Be-

neath this crag,

Huge as despair, as if in
weariness,

The melancholy mountain

66 DEATH IS THE VEIL THAT THOSE WHO LIVE CALL LIFE."-SHELLEY.

"MAN, ONE HARMONIOUS SOUL OF MANY A SOUL, WHOSE NATURE IS ITS OWN DIVINE CONTROL."-SHELLEY.

398

"THE DULL SNEER OF SELF-LOVED IGNORANCE."-SHELLEY.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Raging among the caverns; and a bridge
Crosses the chasm; and high above these grow,
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
Is matted in one solid roof of shade

[From the tragedy of "The Cenci," act iii., scene 1.-This picture is worthy of a place in Dante's "Inferno."]

"CUSTOM MAKETH BLIND AND OBDURATE THE LOFTIEST HEARTS."-PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

"THE DEAD WHO LEAVE THE STAMP OF EVER-BURNING THOUGHTS ON MANY A PAGE."-SHELLEY.

TO NIGHT.

WIFTLY walk over the western wave,

Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,—
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand,-
Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

FAMILIAR ACTS ARE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH LOVE."-SHELLEY.