The livery of unremembered snow— ... * Fiordispina and her nurse are now * * step by step and stair by stair, 50 That withered woman, grey and white and brown More like a trunk by lichens overgrown Than anything which once could have been human. And ever as she goes the palsied woman * * * * * "How slow and painfully you seem to walk, 60 Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk." "And well it may, Fiordispina, dearest—well-a-day! You are hastening to a marriage-bed; I to the grave!". "And if my love were dead, Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie Beside him in my shroud as willingly 66 As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought." Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought Not be remembered till it snows in June; Such fancies are a music out of tune 70 With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night. What! would you take all beauty and delight Back to the Paradise from which you sprung, And leave to grosser mortals....? And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet And subtle mystery by which spirits meet? .... 81 THE TOWER OF FAMINE.1 AMID the desolation of a city, Which was the cradle, and is now the grave Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's waveThere stands the Tower of Famine. It is built Upon some prison homes, whose dwellers rave For bread, and gold, and blood: pain, linked to guilt, Agitates the light flame of their hours, There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers And sacred domes; each marble-ribbèd roof, 11 The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers Of solitary wealth; the tempest-proof Are by its presence dimmed-they stand aloof, 1 This poem was meant to refer to Ugolino's prison at Pisa; but Shelley seems to have been misled as to its identity, and to have described instead the Torre Guelfa.-ED. And are withdrawn-so that the world is bare, As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror Amid a company of ladies fair Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue, 20 The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error, Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew. THE WANING MOON. AND like a dying lady, lean and pale, TO THE MOON. I. ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,— And ever changing, like a joyless eye Thats no ch +worth its constancy? II. f the spirit, in thee it pities . . AN ALLEGORY. I. A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant Stands yawning on the highway of the life Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt; Around it rages an unceasing strife Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. And II. many pass it by with careless tread, Not knowing that a shadowy... Tracks every traveller even to where the dead Wait peacefully for their companion new; But others, by more curious humour led Pause to examine, these are very few, And they learn little there, except to know That shadows follow them where'er they go. TIME LONG PAST. I. LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead A tone which is now forever fled, Was T II There were sweet d Of T And, was it sadness or delight, Which made us wish it yet might last— III. There is regret, almost remorse, For Time long past. 'Tis like a child's beloved corse SONNET. YE hasten to the grave! What seek ye there, Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear? O thou quick heart which pantest to possess Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess must go, And all that never yet was known wouldst know Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press, With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path, Seeking, alike from happiness and woe, A refuge in the cavern of grey death? O heart, and mind, and thoughts, what thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below? |