These stinking foxes, these devouring otters, These hares, these wolves, these anything but men. Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal pigs, Now let your noses be as keen as beagles, your cries [PURGANAX, after unsealing the GREEN BAG, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over SWELLFOOT and his whole Court, who are Your steps as swift as greyhounds, and instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple. The image of FAMINE then arises with a tremendous sound, the PIGS begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into BULLS, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar. The image of FAMINE sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a MINOTAUR rises. More dulcet and symphonious than the Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday; music. Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?) But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho! Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert, Minotaur. I am the Ionian Minotaur, Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho! 404 reagh placed the "Green Bag" on the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano, A friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square beneath Our windows Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the 'chorus of frogs" in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a politicalsatirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus-and Swellfoot was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course, did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside. Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back anything he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck bright truth "from the pale-faced moon; Or dive into the bottom of the deep Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word than from the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woes. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name. EPIPSYCHIDION VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CON- L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. HER OWN WORDS. My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning. Thee to base company (as chance may do), And bid them own that thou art beautiful. ADVERTISEMENT THE Writer of the following Lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that, gran ver gogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, odi colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse I weep vain tears: blood would less denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento. Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage, It over-soared this low and worldly shade, Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest! bitter be, Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be Veiling beneath that radiant form of All that is insupportable in thee Among the Dead! Thou Star above Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow; Pourest such music, that it might assuage thee, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody; This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale song All of its much mortality and wrong, With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightin- From the twin lights thy sweet soul gale! darkens through, Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy: A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?—I measure The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily, And find-alas! mine own infirmity. I love thee; though the world by no thin name Will hide that love, from its unvalued shame. Would we two had been twins of the same mother! Or, that the name my heart lent to another How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me! Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings; Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, She met me, Stranger, upon life's And lured me towards sweet Death; as Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Led into light, life, peace. An ante- In the suspended impulse of its light ness, Were less ethereally light: the brightness Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Burns, inextinguishably beautiful: Young Love should teach Time, in his And from her lips, as from a hyacinth own gray style, All that thou art. guile, full Art thou not void of Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless? A well of sealed and secret happiness, are, Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Which moves not in the moving A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone Amid rude voices? a beloved light? stops Of planetary music heard in trance. The sunbeams of those wells which ever Under the lightnings of the soul-too deep For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. The glory of her being, issuing thence, Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade A Lute, which those whom Love has Of unentangled intermixture, made taught to play Make music on, to soothe the roughest day And lull fond grief asleep? a buried treasure? A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure; By Love, of light and motion: one in tense Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing With the unintermitted blood, which That Love makes all things equal: I birth; And in the soul a wild odour is felt, -I love thee; yes, I That on the fountain of my heart a seal Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight. We are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar; Such difference without discord, as can make Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake Under whose motions life's dull billows As trembling leaves in a continuous air? |