TWO FRAGMENTS TO MARY. I. My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, Where For thine own sake I cannot follow thee. II. The world is dreary, And I am weary Of wandering on without thee, Mary; In thy voice and thy smile, And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary. ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY. I. Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine II. Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone; Whereon the lineaments of that dead face Are graven, till the characters be grown Into itself, and thought no more can trace; 'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanize and harmonize the strain. III. And from its head as from one body grow, Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock IV. And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise After a taper; and the midnight sky V. 'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror; For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare Kindled by that inextricable error, Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air Become a and ever-shifting mirror Of all the beauty and the terror there— A woman's countenance, with serpent locks, Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.' I. THE Fountains mingle with the River II. See the mountains kiss high Heaven And the sunlight clasps the earth 1 Under the title of An Anacreontic this poem occurs in the Harvard College manuscript book, with slight variations from the texts already familiar to Shelley's readers. Shelley was indebted to a French song beginning with the words "Les vents baisent les nuages."-ED. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose I. From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,— From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains. А She leapt down the rocks, With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams ;Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. II. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook And opened a chasm In the rocks;-with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, The bars of the springs below: III. "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! To its blue depth stirred, Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream:Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. IV. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones, Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, |