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So closely our whims on our miseries tread,

That the laugh is awaked ere the tear can be dried, And, as fast as the rain-drop of Pity is shed,

The goose-feathers of Folly can turn it aside, But pledge me the cup-if existence would cloy With hearts ever happy, and heads ever wise, Be ours the light grief that is sister to Joy,

And the short brilliant folly that flashes and dies!

When Hylas was sent with his urn to the fount,

Through fields full of sunshine, with heart full of play, Light rambled the boy over meadow and mount,

And neglected his task for the flowers on the way.
Thus some who, like me, should have drawn and have tasted
The fountain that runs by Philosophy's shrine,

Their time with the flowers on the margin have wasted,
And left their light urns all as empty as mine!
But pledge me the goblet—while Idleness weaves
Her flowerets together, if Wisdom can see
One bright drop or two, that has fall'n on the leaves
From her fountain divine, 'tis sufficient for me!

ST. JEROME'S LOVE.

WHO is the maid my spirit seeks,

Through cold reproof and slander's blight?
Has she Love's roses on her cheeks?
Is hers an eye of this world's light?
No,-wan and sunk with midnight prayer
Are the pale looks of her I love;
Or if, at times, a light be there,
Its beam is kindled from above.

I chose not her, my soul's elect,

From those who seek their Maker's shrine
In gems and garlands proudly deck'd,

As if themselves were things divine!
No-heaven but faintly warms the breast
That beats beneath a broider'd veil ;
And she who comes in glittering vest
To mourn her frailty, still is frail.

Not so the faded form I prize
And love, because its bloom is gone;
The glory in those sainted eyes

Is all the grace her brow puts on. And ne'er was beauty's dawn so bright, So touching as that form's decay, Which, like the altar's trembling light, In holy lustre wastes away!

OFT, IN THE STILLY NIGHT.

OFT, in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,

Fond Memory brings the light

Of other days around me ;
The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimm'd and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken!

Thus, in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

When I remember all

The friends, so link'd together,

I've seen around me fall,

Like leaves in wintry weather;

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garland's dead,

And all but he departed!

Thus in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me.

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

WHEN 'MIDST THE GAY I MEET.

WHEN 'midst the gay I meet
That blessed smile of thine,
Though still on me it turns most sweet,
I scarce can call it mine :

But when to me alone

Your secret tears you show,

Oh! then I feel those tears my own,

And claim them as they flow.

Then still with bright looks bless

The gay, the cold, the free;

Give smiles to those who love you less,

But keep your tears for me.

The snow on Jura's steep

Gan smile with many a beam,

Yet still in chains of coldness sleep,
How bright soe'er it seem.

But, when some deep-felt ray,

Whose touch is fire, appears,

Oh! then the smile is warm'd away,
And, melting, turns to tears.

Then still with bright looks bless
The gay, the cold, the free;

Give smiles to those who love you less,

But keep your tears for me.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart. of Castle Goring, was born at Field Place, Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. He was educated at Eton, and at University College, Oxford, was twice married, and has left two children, a daughter by the first wife, and a son-who is heir to the title-by the second. His widow, the daughter of William Godwin, is well known as the author of Frankenstein, and other novels. Mr. Shelley was cut off in the flower of his years and genius, on the 8th of July, 1822; he was drowned in a storm on the Genoese coast, whither he was hastening, to his abode near the town of Lerici.

It is within the scope neither of the limits nor the object of this work, to enter upon those controversial points, which so occupied the attention, and coloured the existence of this extraordinary man. Suffice it to say (for the man's NATURE can never be left out, where the Poet is concerned), that whether his speculations were well or ill grounded, he is acknowledged on all hands to have been sincere in his pursuit of them; and that his friends entertain the most enthusiastic regard for his memory.

Mr. Shelley was tall, and slight of figure, with a singular union of general delicacy of organization and muscular strength. His hair was brown, prematurely touched with grey; his complexion fair and glowing; his eyes grey and extremely vivid; his face small and delicately featured, especially about the lower part; and he had an expression of countenance, when he was talking in his usual earnest fashion, which has been described elsewhere, as giving you the idea of something" seraphical."

Mr. Shelley's poetry resembles that creation, for the moral harmony of which he was so anxious. It is wonderfully flowing and energetic, round and harmonious as the orb, no less conversant with seas and mountains, than with flowers and the minutest beauty, and it hungers and thirsts after a certain beauty of perfection, as the orb rolls in loving attraction round the sun. He is remarkable for mixing a scholarly grandiosity of style with the most unaffected feeling and the most impulsive expression, and for being alike supernatural and human in his enthusiasm,-that is to say, he is equally fond of soaring away into the most ethereal abstractions, as if he were spirit; and of sympathizing with every-day flesh and blood, as though he had done nothing but suffer and enjoy with the most earth-bound of his fellow-creatures. Whether interrogating Nature in the icy solitudes of Chamouny, or thrilling with the lark in the sunshine, or shedding indignant tears with sorrow and poverty, or pulling flowers like a child in a field, or pitching himself back into the depths of time and space, and discoursing with the first forms and gigantic shadows of creation; he is alike in earnest, and AT HOME. His faults arise from the very excess of his sympathies with all things. He is sometimes obscure in the remoteness of his abstractions, and sometimes so impatient with the forms of error, as to seem contradictory to his own tolerant doctrine. He not only

"Relishes all things sharply, Passioned as we"

He is far more passioned, and relishes them with a sharpness that makes him cry out like one constituted almost too delicately for existence. The cry is useful, because it begets attention to what might be otherwise too dully endured; but it leaves his genius with a certain charge of impatience and excess upon it, that hazards, meanwhile, that very enjoyment of the beautiful which he longed for, and which it is the more peculiar business of poetry to produce.

THE EDITOR is indebted for this Memoir of Shelley, and also for that of Keats, to the friend of both, Leigh Hunt. The dangerous tendency of Shelley's writings,-his mistakes, theoretical and practical, acknowledged in some instances by himself,-will not find from others the excuse they have found from those who had personal regard for the man, as well as admiration of the Poet. Shelley may have been, as it is contended he was, SINCERE in his schemes for re-modelling society; but his doctrines are not, therefore, the less pernicious. Unhappily he died before judgment had arrived to the aid of genius: it is impossible to doubt that a mind so naturally generous would have atoned for many of the errors he had assisted to propagate, if he had lived to be convinced of them. He publicly disavowed (in the "Examiner") the republication of "Queen Mab;" and regretted that he had written it. It was the work of a youth exasperated by scholastic injustice.

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SEA-GIRT City! thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen;

Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier.

A less drear ruin then than now,
With thy conquest-branded brow
Stooping to the slave of slaves
From thy throne, among the waves
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew
Flies, as once before it flew,
O'er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its ancient state,

G

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