Who rather than pay any rent, XXIII. No bailiff dared within that space, XXIV. Seven miles above-below-around- LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.1 LEGHORN, July 1, 1820. THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be No net of words in garish colours wrought But a soft cell, where when that fades away, 10 Which in those hearts which must remember me Grow, making love an immortality. Whoever should behold me now, I wist, Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, win Its way over the sea, and sport therein; 1 See vol. i, pages xliii, xlvii, and xlix. 20 For round the walls are hung dread engines, such As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, 30 On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, Which fishers found under the utmost crag 40 Magical forms the brick floor overspreadProteus transformed to metal did not make More figures, or more strange; nor did he take Such shapes of unintelligible brass, Or heap himself in such a horrid mass 50 To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood: Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks, The elements of what will stand the shocks To catalogize in this verse of mine : A pretty bowl of wood-not full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the dæmons of the earthquake, who 60 Reply to them in lava-cry halloo! And call out to the cities o'er their head, Roofs, towers and shrines, the dying and the dead, Crash through the chinks of earth-and then all quaff Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. In colour like the wake of light that stains rains The inmost shower of its white fire-the breeze 70 Is still-blue heaven smiles over the pale seas. A hollow screw with cogs-Henry will know quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. 80 Instruments, for plans nautical and statical; With ink in it ; A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink The liquor doctors rail at-and which I Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, 90 And cry out,- heads or tails?" where'er we be. 66 Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks, A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,1 And here like some weird Archimage sit I, Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery, The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind 100 If Shelley had acquired in his boyhood and carried into maturity the ordinary schoolboy's pronunciation lograthims, this couplet would be less impeachable on the score of rhyme than it must remain on the supposition that he pronounced the word properly. To the eye and the punctilious ear the rhyme is ab solutely indefensible.-ED. |