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its blossoms fade,

And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade; Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit, Whose chillness struck a canker to its root. February 1812.

1812.

EYES.

How eloquent are eyes!

Not the rapt poet's frenzied lay
When the soul's wildest feelings stray
Can speak so well as they.
How eloquent are eyes!

Not music's most impassioned note
On which love's warmest fervours float
Like them bids rapture rise.

Love, look thus again,—

That your look may lighten a waste of years,
Darting the beam that conquers cares

Through the cold shower of tears.
Love, look thus again!

THE DEMON OF THE WORLD.

CONCLUSION.

AWHILE the Spirit paused in ecstasy.

Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,
Strange things within their belted orbs appear.
Like animated frenzies, dimly moved

Shadows and skeletons and fiendly shapes,
Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead
Sculpturing records for each memory

In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,
Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell
Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world.
And they did build vast trophies, instruments
Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,
Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls
With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,

Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained
With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,
The sanguine codes of venerable crime.
The likeness of a throned king came by
When these had passed, bearing upon his brow
A threefold crown. His countenance was calm,
His eye severe and cold; but his right hand
Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw
By fits with secret smiles a human heart
Concealed beneath his robe. And motley shapes,
A multitudinous throng, around him knelt,
With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks
Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by,

Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,

Which human hearts must feel while human tongues Tremble to speak. They did rage horribly, Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemies

1815.

Against the Dæmon of the World, and high
Hurling their armèd hands where the pure Spirit,

Serene and inaccessibly secure,

Stood on an isolated pinnacle;

The flood of ages combating below,
The depth of the unbounded universe
Above, and all around

Nature's unchanging harmony.

MONT BLANC.

(A CANCELLED passage of THE POEM).
THERE is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert caves. It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliffs which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale; it is the blast

Descending on the pines. The torrents pour .

June 1816.

...

SINGING.

My spirit like a charmed barque doth swim,
Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,

Far away into the regions dim

Of rapture-as a boat with swift sails winging
Its way adown some many-winding river.

1817.

1817.

A HATE-SONG.

(IMPROVISED).

A HATER he came and sat by a ditch,

And he took out an old cracked lute;

And he sang a song which was more of a screech 'Gainst a woman that was a brute.

1817.

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.

(CANCELLED PASSAGES OF THAT POEM, P 167).

THE world is now our dwelling-place:
Where'er the earth one fading trace

Of what was great and free does keep,
That is our home.

Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race

Shall our contented exile reap:
For who that in some happy place
His own free thoughts can freely chase
By woods and waves can clothe his face
In cynic smiles?-Child! we shall weep.

This lament,

The memory of thy grievous wrong,-
Will fade.

But genius is omnipotent

To hallow

JULIAN AND MADDALO.

(FRAGMENTS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN ORIGINALLY INTENDED FOR THAT POEM).

"WHAT think you the dead are ?"

"Why, dust and clay :

What should they be?"

"Tis the last hour of day.

Look on the west! How beautiful it is,

Vaulted with radiant vapours! The deep bliss
Of that unutterable light has made

The edges of that cloud . . . fade

Into a hue like some harmonious thought
Wasting itself on that which it had wrought,
Till it dies; . . . and between

The light hues of the tender, pure, serene,
And infinite tranquillity of heaven."

"Ay, beautiful! But, when our . . .

1818.

"Perhaps the only comfort which remains
Is the unheeded clanking of my chains,
The which I make, and call it melody."

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.

(VARIATION OF THE LYRIC OF THE MOON, vol. i. p. 375). As a violet's gentle eye,

Gazes on the azure sky

Until its hue grows like what it beholds;

As a grey and empty mist

Lies like solid amethyst

Over the western mountain it enfolds,

When the sunset sleeps

Upon its snow;

As a strain of sweetest sound

Wraps itself the wind around

1819.

Until the voiceless wind be music too;

As aught dark, vain, and dull,
Basking in what is beautiful,
Is full of light and love.

1820.

ODE TO LIBERTY.·

(A CANCELLED PASSAGE OF THE POEM).
WITHIN a cavern of man's trackless spirit
Is throned an image so intensely fair
That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
Worship, and, as they kneel, tremble, and wear
The splendour of its presence; and the light

Penetrates their dreamlike frame,

Till they become charged with the strength of flame.

EPIPSYCHIDION.

(CANCELLED PASSAGES OF THAT POEM).

AND what is that most brief and bright delight
Which rushes through the touch and through the sight,
And stands before the spirit's inmost throne,

A naked seraph? none hath ever known.
Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire :
Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire,
Not to be touched but to be felt alone,

It fills the world with glory-and is gone.

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It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream

Of life, which flows like a . . dream
Into the light of morning, to the grave
As to an ocean.

What is that joy which serene infancy
Perceives not, as the hours content them by
Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys
The shapes of this new world, in giant toys

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