And from thy touch like fire doth leap. Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet:

Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!

II.

A breathless awe, like the swift change
Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers,
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
Thou breathest now in fast ascending num-
bers.

The

cope of heaven seems rent and cloven By the enchantment of thy strain, And on my shoulders wings are woven, To follow its sublime career,

Beyond the mighty moons that wane

Upon the verge of nature's utmost sphere, Till the world's shadowy walls are passed and disappear.

III.

Her voice is hovering o'er my soul-it lingers O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings; The blood and life within those snowy fingers

Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. My brain is wild, my breath comes quickThe blood is listening in my frame; And thronging shadows, fast and thick, Fall on my overflowing eyes;

My heart is quivering like a flame;

As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.

IV.

I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee, Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy

song

Flows on, and fills all things with melody.-
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong,
On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.

Now 'tis the breath of summer night,
Which when the starry waters sleep,

Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright,

Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.

TO CONSTANTIA.

I.

THE rose that drinks the fountain dew
In the pleasant air of noon
Grows pale and blue with altered hue-
In the gaze of the nightly moon;
For the planet of frost, so cold and bright,
Makes it wan with her borrowed light.

II.

Such is my heart-roses are fair,

And that at best a withered blossom;

But thy false care did idly wear

Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom ;

And fed with love, like air and dew,
Its growth-

FRAGMENT: TO ONE SINGING.1

My spirit like a charmèd bark doth swim Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,

1 If these lines also allude to the singing of Claire, which is known to have delighted Shelley, she has

Far away into the regions dim

Of rapture as a boat, with swift sails winging Its way adown some many-winding river.

LINES TO WILLIAM GODWIN.

MIGHTY eagle! thou that soarest
O'er the misty mountain forest,
And amid the light of morning
Like a cloud of glory hiest,
And when night descends defiest

The embattled tempests' warning!

TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR.'

I.

THY Country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
Which rends our Mother's bosom-Priestly Pest!
Masked Resurrection of a buried Form! 2

II.

Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold, Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown,

And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,

Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.

the honour of a very august connexion, namely with Asia in Prometheus Unbound. Compare the fragment with the song at the end of Act ii.-ED.

1 On his depriving Shelley of the custody of his children. See vol. i, page xl.-ED.

The star-chamber, Mrs. Shelley says.—ED.

III.

And, whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands

Watching the beck of Mutability

Delays to execute her high commands, And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,

IV.

O let a father's curse be on thy soul,

And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb; Be both, on thy grey head, a leaden cowl To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom!

V.

I curse thee by a parent's outraged love,

By hopes long cherished and too lately lost, By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove, By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed;

VI.

By those infantine smiles of happy light, Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth, Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night, Hiding the promise of a lovely birth;

VII.

By those unpractised accents of young speech, Which he who is a father thought to frame To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teachThou strike the lyre of mind! O grief and shame!

VIII.

By all the happy see in children's growth-
That undeveloped flower of budding years-
Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,
Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest
fears-

IX.

By all the days under an hireling's care,
Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness,—
O wretched ye if ever any were,-

Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless!

X.

By the false cant which on their innocent lips Must hang like poison on an opening bloom, By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb

XI.

By thy most impious Hell, and all its terror; By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt Of thine impostures, which must be their errorThat sand on which thy crumbling power is built

XII.

By thy complicity with lust and hate

Thy thirst for tears-thy hunger after goldThe ready frauds which ever on thee waitThe servile arts in which thou hast grown old

XIII.

By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smileBy all the arts and snares of thy black den, And-for thou canst outweep the crocodileBy thy false tears-those millstones braining

men

XIV.

By all the hate which checks a father's loveBy all the scorn which kills a father's careBy those most impious hands which dared

remove

Nature's high bounds-by thee-and by despair