Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, STROPHE B. 2. Thou youngest giant birth, Which from the groaning earth Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale! Last of the Intercessors Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth; Though from their hundred gates the leagued With hurried legions move! ANTISTROPHE a. What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; Shall theirs have been-devoured by their own hounds! Be thou like the imperial Basilisk, Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk: Fear not, but gaze-for freemen mightier grow, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe. If Hope and Truth, and Justice may avail, Thou shalt be great.-All hail! For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore:- Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms The crash and darkness of a thousand storms Of crags and thunder-clouds? Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride! Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The Serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide With Iron light is dyed, The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating; A hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries-down the aerial regions Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, Their dull and savage lust Great Spirit, deepest Love! All things which live and are, within the Italian shore ; Who spreadest heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; O bid those beams be each a blinding brand Bid thy bright Heaven above To make it ours and thine! Or, with thy harmonizing ardours fill And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon *The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan. Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire- Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.- First our pleasures die—and then All things that we love and cherish, AUTUMN: LIBERTY. THE fiery mountains answer each other; From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Is bellowing under ground. But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp. From billow and mountain and exhalation THE WANING MOON. AND like the dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky earth, A white and shapeless mass. TO THE MOON. ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,And everchanging, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? DEATH. DEATH is here, and death is there, SUMMER AND WINTER. It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds, It was a winter such as when birds die THE TOWER OF FAMINE.* AMID the desolation of a city, Which was the cradle, and is now the grave, There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror THE WORLD'S WANDERERS. TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Will thy pinions close now? Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray Weary wind who wanderest SONNET. YE hasten to the dead! What seek ye there, Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess go, And that which never yet was known wouldst know Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press A refuge in the cavern of gray death? O heart, and mind, and thoughts! What thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below? LINES TO A REVIEWER. ALAS! good friend, what profit can you see NOTE ON THE POEMS OF 1820. BY THE EDITOR. WE spent the latter part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed several hours daily in the Gallery, and made various notes on its ancient works of art. His thoughts were a good deal taken up also by the project of a steamboat, undertaken by a friend, an engineer, to ply between Leghorn and Marseilles, for which he supplied a sum of money. This was a sort of plan to delight Shelley, and he was greatly disappointed when it was thrown aside. We spent the summer at the baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile; and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome, intelligent race, and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest There was something in Florence that disagreed days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey excessively with his health, and he suffered far more pain than usual; so much so that we left it sooner than we intended, and removed to Pisa, where we had some friends, and, above all, where we could consult the celebrated Vaccà, as to the cause of Shelley's sufferings. He, like every other medical man, could only guess at that, and gave little hope of immediate relief; he enjoined him to abstain from all physicians and medicine, and to leave his complaint to nature. As he had vainly consulted medical men of the highest repute in England, he was easily persuaded to adopt this advice. Pain and ill-health followed him to the end, but the residence at Pisa agreed with him better than any other, and there in consequence we remained. In the spring we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes, whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fireflies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems. He addressed the letter to Mrs. Gisborne from this house, which was hers; he had made his study of the workshop of her son, who was an engineer. Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of my father in her younger days. She was a lady of great accomplishments, and charming from her frank and affectionate nature. She had the most intense love of knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved freshness of mind, after a life of considerable adversity. As a favourite friend of my father we had sought her with eagerness, and the most open and cordial friendship was established between us. on foot to the summit of Monte San Pelegrinoa mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days in the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted, though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas. This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes-wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested. The surpassing excellence of The Cenci had made me greatly desire that Shelley should increase his popularity, by adopting subjects that would more suit the popular taste, than a poem conceived in the abstract and dreamy spirit of the Witch of Atlas. It was not only that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own resources, and on the inspiration of his own soul, and wrote because his mind overflowed, without the hope of being appreciated. I had not the most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspi rations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of the many, but I felt sure, that if his poems were more addressed to the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the day would be acknowledged; and that popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues; which, in those days, it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious calumnies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a few unfinished verses that showed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following: Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish, if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart, and he loved to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine or pale twilight, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of the woods; which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines, the flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds which nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which form the Witch of Atlas; it is a brilliant congregation of ideas, such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much loved. Our stay at the baths of San Giuliano was shortened by an accident. At the foot of our garden ran the canal that communicated between the Serchio and the Arno. The Serchio overflowed its banks, and breaking its bounds, this canal also overflowed; all this part of the country is below the level of its rivers, and the consequence was, that it was speedily flooded. The rising waters filled the square of the baths, in the lower part of which our house was situated. The canal overflowed in the garden behind; the rising waters on either side at last burst open the doors, and meeting in the house, rose to the height of six feet. It was a picturesque sight at night, to see the peasants driving the cattle from the plains below, to the hills above the baths. A fire was kept up to guide them across the ford; and the forms of the men and the animals showed in dark relief against the red glare of the flame, which was reflected again in the waters that filled the square. We then removed to Pisa, and took up our abode there for the winter. The extreme mildness of the climate suited Shelley, and his solitude was enlivened by an intercourse with several Intimate friends. Chance cast us, strangely enough, on this quiet, half-unpeopled town; but its very peace suited Shelley,-its river, the near mountains, and not distant sea, added to its attractions, and were the objects of many delightful excursions. We feared the south of Italy and a hotter climate, on account of our child; our former bereavement inspiring us with terror. We seemed to take root | here, and moved little afterwards; often, indeed, entertaining projects for visiting other parts of Italy, but still delaying. But for our fears, on account of our child, I believe we should have wandered over the world, both being passionately fond of travelling. But human life, besides its great unalterable necessities, is ruled by a thousand liliputian ties, that shackle at the time, although it is difficult to account afterwards for their influence over our destiny. |