Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions, Where power's poor dupes and victims yet have never Propitiated the savage fear of kings With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns; 30 Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo To the poor worm who envies us his love! of Paradise, These exiles from the old and sinful world! * * * This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights Dart mitigated influence through their veil green 41 The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth; Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul That owns no master; while the loathliest ward Of this wide prison, England, is a nest Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,To which the eagle spirits of the free, 51 Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth, Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die And cannot be repelled. Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time, They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop Through palaces and temples thunderproof. SCENE V. ARCHY. I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and court the tears shed on its old roots (?), as the [wind?] plays the song of 66 A widow bird sate mourning Upon a wintry bough." (Sings) Heigho! the lark and the owl! One flies the morning, and one lulls the night : Only the nightingale, poor fond soul, 66 Sings like the fool through darkness and light. 'A widow bird sate mourning for her love IO Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground, And little motion in the air Except the mill-wheel's sound." THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.1 SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth- Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, To which the birds tempered their matin lay. All flowers in field or forest which unclose Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear 1 It was on this poem that Shelley was engaged at the time of his death. See vol. i, pages lx and lxi. -ED. Their portion of the toil, which he of old Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem stem Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread 30 Was so transparent, that the scene came through As clear as when a veil of light is drawn That I had felt the freshness of that dawn, Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn Under the self-same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air, And then a vision on my brain was rolled. 40 As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream :Methought I sate beside a public way Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky One of the million leaves of summer's bier :; 50 Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear, some Seeking the object of another's fear; And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, And others mournfully within the gloom Of their own shadow walked and called it death; And some fled from it as it were a ghost, 60 Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath : But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day æther lost, Upon that path where flowers never grew,- |