Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers,
As if it lived, and was outworn with speed; Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart, Till it diffused itself, and all the chamber And walls seemed melted into emerald fire That burned not; in the midst of which ap- peared
A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment As made the blood tingle in my warm feet: 140 Then bent over a vase, and murmuring Low, unintelligible melodies,
Placed something in the mould like melonseeds,
And slowly faded, and in place of it
A soft hand issued from the veil of fire, Holding a cup like a magnolia flower, And poured upon the earth within the vase The element with which it overflowed, Brighter than morning light, and purer than The water of the springs of Himalah.
Not until my dream became Like a child's legend on the tideless sand, Which the first foam erases half, and half Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought
To set new cuttings in the empty urns;
And, when I came to that beside the lattice, I saw two little dark-green leaves
Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then I half-remembered my forgotten dream. And day by day, green as a gourd in June, The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, Until the golden eye of the bright flower, Through the dark lashes of those veinèd lids, Disencumbered of their silent sleep, Gazed like a star into the morning light. Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw The pulses
With which the purple velvet flower was fed To overflow, and like a poet's heart
Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment, Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell,
And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day I nursed the plant, and on the double flute 180 Played to it on the sunny winter days Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain
On silent leaves, and sang those words in which Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings; And I would send tales of forgotten love Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs Of maids deserted in the olden time, And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom. Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant, So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was
And crept abroad into the moonlight air, And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon, The sun averted less his oblique beam.
And the plant died not in the frost?
And went out of the lattice which I left Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires Along the garden and across the lawn,
And down the slope of moss and through the tufts
Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown
With simple lichens, and old hoary stones, 200 On to the margin of the glassy pool, Even to a nook of unblown violets And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn, Under a pine with ivy overgrown.
And there its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at
This shape of autumn couched in their recess, Then it dilated, and it grew until
One half lay floating on the fountain wave, Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies, Kept time
Among the snowy water-lily buds.
Its shape was such as summer melody
Of the south wind in spicy vales might give To some light cloud bound from the golden
To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed
In hue and form that it had been a mirror Of all the hues and forms around it and Upon it pictured by the sunny beams Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool,
Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared
Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflexions Of every infant flower and star of moss And veined leaf in the azure odorous air. And thus it lay in the Elysian calm Of its own beauty, floating on the line Which, like a film in purest space, divided 230 The heaven beneath the water from the heaven Above the clouds; and every day I went Watching its growth and wondering; And as the day grew hot, methought I saw A glassy vapour dancing on the pool, And on it little quaint and filmy shapes, With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall, Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.
O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from heavenAs if heaven dawned upon the world of dreamWhen darkness rose on the extinguished day Out of the eastern wilderness.
Have found a moment's paradise in sleep Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.
Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pursuivants, Marshalsmen, Law Students, Judges, Clerk.
SCENE I. The Mask of the Inns of Court. A PURSUIVANT. PLACE, for the Marshal of the Mask!
1 References to the projected play on the subject of Charles I. are to be found in Shelley's letters, from February 1821 to April 1822. Mrs. Shelley says he proceeded slowly with it, and at last threw it aside for The Triumph of Life. "In my opinion," said Alfieri, in dedicating his Agis to Charles,
no way make a tragedy of your tragical death, the cause of it not being sublime." Perhaps that was what Shelley felt. See, however, page lviii of vol. i, -ED.
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