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POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVII.

PRINCE ATHANASE.

A FRAGMENT.

PART I.

THERE was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, Had grown quite weak and grey before his time; Nor any could the restless griefs unravel

Which burned within him, withering up his prime

And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.
Not his the load of any secret crime,

For nought of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same;
Not his the thirst for glory or command,
Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame ;
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,

Had left within his soul the dark unrest :
Nor what religion fables of the grave
Feared he,-Philosophy's accepted guest.

For none than he a purer heart could have,
Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.

What sorrow, strange, and shadowy,'and unknown,
Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?
If with a human sadness he did groan,

He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
And such a glorious consolation find

In others' joy, when all their own is dead:
He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
And yet, unlike all others, it is said

That from such toil he never found relief.
Although a child of fortune and of power,
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief,

His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower
Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,

Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.-
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse
The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate

Those false opinions which the harsh rich use To blind the world they famish for their pride; Nor did he hold from any man his dues,

But, like a steward in honest dealings tried,
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,
His riches and his cares he did divide.

Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;

Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
And to his many friends-all loved him well-
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,

If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
If not, he smiled or wept ; and his weak foes,
He neither spurned nor hated-though with fell
And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
They past like aimless arrows from his ear.-
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close

To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere
May comprehend within its wide array.
What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?

He knew not. Though his life day after day, Was failing, like an unreplenished stream, Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,

Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem

Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour,
Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,

Were driven within him by some secret power,
Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower,

O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war
Is levied by the night-contending winds,
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;—

Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends Which wake and feed on everliving woe,What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds

A mirror found, he knew not-none could know; But on whoe'er might question him he turned The light of his frank eyes, as if to show

He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look ;
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned

The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale :
So that his friends soon rarely undertook

To stir his secret pain without avail ;-
For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil

Between his heart and mind,-both unrelieved Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad, others believed

That memories of an antenatal life
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell:
And others said that such mysterious grief

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell On souls like his, which owned no higher law Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible

By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
And others,-""Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of memory never saw

"But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream Through shattered mines and caverns underground Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam

"Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure. Soon its exhausted waters will have found

"A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, O Athanase!-in one so good and great, Evil or tumult cannot long endure."

So spake they idly of another's state Babbling vain words and fond philosophy: This was their consolation; such debate

Men held with one another; nor did he, Like one who labours with a human woe, Decline this talk; as if its theme might be

Another, not himself, he to and fro

Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit; And none but those who loved him best could know

That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless night-mare grief did sit

Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier

hold;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 difference-Author's Note.

FRAGMENTS OF PRINCE ATHANASE. PART II.

FRAGMENT I,

PRINCE Athanase had one beloved friend,
An old, old man, with hair of silver white, [blend
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and
With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight

Had spared in Greece – the blight that cramps and
And in his olive bower at Enoe
[blinds,-
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds

A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates
Many a drear month in a great ship-so he

With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:
"The mind becomes that which it contemplates,"-

And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men ;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing

A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen

Was grass-grown-and the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:-

And as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path,
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief

And blighting hope, who with the news of death Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, She saw beneath the chesnuts, far beneath,

An old man toiling up, a weary wight;
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light

*The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor. In the first sketch of the Poem he named it Pandemos and Urania. Athanase seeks through the world the One whom he may love. He meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a lady, who appears to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus, who, after disappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. "On his death-bed the lady, who can really reply to his soul, comes and kisses his lips."-The Death-bed of Athanase. The poet describes her

Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon ;

Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came
The light from them, as when tears of delight
Double the western planet's serene frame.

This slender note is all we have to aid our imagination in shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author imaged. -M. S.

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And their lips moved; one seemed to speak,
When suddenly the mountain crackt,
And through the chasm the floor did break
With an earth-uplifting cataract :
The statues gave a joyous scream,
And on its wings the pale thin dream
Lifted the Lady from the stream.

The dizzy flight of that phantom pale Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, And she arose, while from the veil

Of her dark eyes the dream did creep; And she walked about as one who knew That sleep has sights as clear and true As any waking eyes can view. MARLOW, 1817.

TO CONSTANTIA SINGING.

THUS to be lost and thus to sink and die,
Perchance were death indeed!-Constantia, turn!
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,
Even though the sounds which were thy voice,
which burn

Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;

Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour it And from thy touch like fire doth leap. [is yet, Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet, Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget! A breathless awe, like the swift change

Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers, Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange, Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven By the enchantment of thy strain, And on my shoulders wings are woven, To follow its sublime career, Beyond the mighty moons that wane

Upon the verge of nature's utmost sphere, Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear.

Her voice is hovering o'er my soul-it lingers

O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings, The blood and life within those snowy fingers

Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick—
The blood is listening in my frame,
And thronging shadows, fast and thick,
Fall on my overflowing eyes;
My heart is quivering like a flame;

As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstacies.

I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody.—
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong,
On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.

Now 'tis the breath of summer night,
Which, when the starry waters sleep,

Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.

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