Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart.
Away from me, or stoop to wear
The mask of scorn, although it be
To hide the love thou feel'st for me.

YET look on me

ΤΟ

-take not thine eyes away, Which feed upon the love within mine own, Which is indeed but the reflected ray

Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown. Yet speak to me-thy voice is as the tone Of my heart's echo, and I think I hear

That thou yet lovest me; yet thou alone Like one before a mirror, without care Of aught but thine own features, imaged there; And yet I wear out life in watching thee;

A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed Art kind when I am sick, and pity me.

LINES.1

I.

THE cold earth slept below,

Above the cold sky shone;

And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

1 Though usually assigned to November 1815, these lines probably belong to November 1816, the month in which Harriett Shelley drowned herself.

66

If so,

raven hair" is used as a disguise, Harriett's hair having been light brown.-ED.

II.

The wintry hedge was black,

The green grass was not seen,

The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway track, Had bound their folds o'er many a crack, Which the frost had made between.

III.

Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;

As a fenfire's beam on a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

IV.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved—
The wind made thy bosom chill—

The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

THE SUNSET.

THERE late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,

He walked along the pathway of a field Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, But to the west was open to the sky.

II

There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
And the old dandelion's hoary beard,
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods-and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead.-
"Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, 21
"I never saw the sun? We will walk1 here
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me."

That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep-but when the morning came The lady found her lover dead and cold. Let none believe that God in mercy gave That stroke.

wild,

The lady died not, nor grew

But
year by year lived on-in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, 30
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her agèd father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard
hearts

Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;-
Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:
Her eyelashes were worn away with tears;

1 This line is probably corrupt in two particulars. I believe the true reading to be sun-rise for sun and wake for walk; but I know of no authority for making the changes.-ED.

Her lips and cheeks were like things dead—so

pale;

Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins

40

And weak articulations might be seen
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

"Inheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem, Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love; Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph werePeace!"

This was the only moan she ever made.

FRAGMENT ON HOME.

50

DEAR home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,

The least of which wronged Memory ever makes Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.

FRAGMENT OF A GHOST-STORY.

A SHOVEL of his ashes took
From the hearth's obscurest nook,
Muttering mysteries as she went.
Helen and Henry knew that Granny
Was as much afraid of ghosts as any,
And so they followed hard-

But Helen clung to her brother's arm,
And her own spasm made her shake.

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817.

MARIANNE'S DREAM.1

I.

A PALE dream came to a Lady fair,
And said, "A boon, a boon, I pray!
I know the secrets of the air,

And things are lost in the glare of day,
Which I can make the sleeping see,
If they will put their trust in me.

II.

And thou shalt know of things unknown,
If thou wilt let me rest between
The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen:"
And half in hope, and half in fright,
The Lady closed her eyes so bright.

III.

At first all deadly shapes were driven
Tumultuously across her sleep,
And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven
All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep;
And the Lady ever looked to spy
If the golden sun shone forth on high.

IV.

And, as towards the east she turned,
She saw aloft in the morning air,
Which now with hues of sunrise burned,
A great black Anchor rising there;

1 Mrs. Leigh Hunt, the "Marianne" of this poem, dreamed the dream in question and related it to Shelley.-ED.