LXXXVI.

HE wanders (like a day-appearing dream
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind)

Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.

LXXXVII.

THE rude wind is singing
The dirge of the music dead;
The cold worms are clinging
Where kisses were lately fed.

LXXXVIII.

"WHAT art thou, presumptuous, who profanest
The wreath to mighty poets only due,
Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?
Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few
Who wander o'er the paradise of fame

In sacred dedication ever grew ;

One of the crowd thou art without a name."
"Ah! friend, 'tis the false laurel that I wear.
Bright though it seem, ..

it is not the same

As that which bound Milton's immortal hair. Its dew is poison; and the hopes that quicken

Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair, Are flowers which die almost before they sicken; And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal

Is that 'tis my distinction. If I fall,

I shall not weep out of the vital day,
Tomorrow dust, nor wear a dull decay."

LXXXIX.

THE babe is at peace within the womb,
The corpse is at rest within the tomb,
We begin in what we end.

XC.

WHEN a lover clasps his fairest,

Then be our dread sport the rarest.
Their caresses were like the chaff
In the tempest, and be our laugh
His despair-her epitaph!
When a mother clasps her child,
Watch till dusty Death has piled
His cold ashes on the clay;
She has loved it many a day-
She remains,—it fades away.

XCI.

WHEN soft winds and sunny skies
With the green earth harmonize,
And the young and dewy dawn,
Bold as an unhunted fawn,
Up the windless heaven is gone,

Laugh!-for, ambushed in the day,
Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey.

XCII.

I FAINT, I perish with my love! I grow
Frail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale
Under the evening's ever-changing glow :
I die like mist upon the gale,

And like a wave under the calm I fail.

XCIII.

GREAT Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought Nurtures within its unimagined caves,

In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind, Giving a voice to its mysterious waves.

1821.

XCIV.

SONNET TO BYRON.

[I AM afraid these verses will not please you, but]

If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill
Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair
The ministration of the thoughts that fill

The mind which, like a worm whose life may share
A portion of the unapproachable,

Marks your creations rise as fast and fair

As perfect worlds at the Creator's will.

But such is my regard that nor your power

To soar above the heights where others [climb],
Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour

Cast from the envious future on the time,

Move one regret for his unhonoured name

Who dares these words :-the worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in homage of the God.

XCV.

FAINT with love, the Lady of the South

Lay in the paradise of Lebanon

Under a heaven of cedar-boughs; the drouth

Of love was on her lips; the light was gone
Out of her eyes.

XCVI.

COME, thou awakener of the spirit's ocean,

Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave

No thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion !

XCVII.

THE ISLE.

THERE was a little lawny islet,
By anemone and violet,

Like mosaic, paven :

And its roof was flowers and leaves,
Which the summer's breath inweaves,
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,—

Each a gem engraven :

Girt by many an azure wave

With which the clouds and mountains pave
A lake's blue chasm.

1823.

XCVIII.

BRIGHT wanderer, fair coquette of heaven,

To whom alone it has been given
To change and be adored for ever,
Envy not this dim world, for never
But once within its shadow grew
One fair as

SHELLEY'S NOTE TO PRINCE ATHANASE.

P. 124.

And so his grief remained—let it remain―untold

THE author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase when it struck him that, in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this diffidence.

TRANSLATIONS.

HYMNS OF HOMER.

HYMN TO MERCURY.

I.

SING, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove,
The Herald-child, King of Arcadia
And all its pastoral hills, whom, in sweet love
Having been interwoven, modest May
Bore Heaven's dread Supreme. An antique grove
Shadowed the cavern where the lovers lay

In the deep night, unseen by Gods or men,
And white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then.

II.

Now, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling,
And heaven's tenth moon chronicled her relief,
She gave to light a babe all babes excelling,
A schemer subtle beyond all belief,

A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing,
A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief,
Who mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve,
And other glorious actions to achieve.

III.

The babe was born at the first peep of day;
He began playing on the lyre at noon;
And the same evening did he steal away
Apollo's herds. The fourth day of the moon,
On which him bore the venerable May,

From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon,
Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep,
But out to seek Apollo's herds would creep.