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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;

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Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man's free worship, from the God who

loves,

To the poor worm who envies us his love!
Receive, thou young

of Paradise, These exiles from the old and sinful world!

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Dart mitigated influence through their veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep

green

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The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.
The boundless universe

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,

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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 "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,

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."

SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth— The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

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,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent,

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

ΙΟ

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
Took as his own, and then imposed on them: 20
But I, whom thoughts which must remain
untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary

stem

Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

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

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Was so transparent, that the scene came through

As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew

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,
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky

One of the million leaves of summer's bier ;
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy

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Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared, and

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, Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:

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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,-
And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

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