minister in power; such was not the case during the adminis tration which excited Shelley's abhorrence. The poem was written for the people, and is therefore in a more popular tone than usual; portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but many stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and admired those beginning,~ My Father Time is old and gray, before I knew to what poem they were to belong. But the most touching passage is that which describes the blessed effects of liberty; they might make a patriot of any man, whose heart was not wholly closed against his humbler fellow-creatures. Shelley loved the people, and respected them as often more virtuous, as always more suffering, and, therefore, more deserving of sympathy, than the great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side. He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs-he wrote a few, but in those days of prosecution for libel they could not be printed. They are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his earnestness, and with what heartfelt compassion ne went home to the direct point of injury-that oppression is detestable, as being the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph-such is the scope of the Ode to the Assertors of Liberty. He sketched also a new version of our pational anthem, as addressed to Liberty. God prosper, speed, and save, Pave with swift victory The steps of Liberty, Whom Britons own to be Immortal Queen. See, she comes throned on high, On swift eternity! God save the Queen! Millions on millions wait Firm, rapid, and elate, On her majestic state! God save the Queen! She is thine own pure sou God save the Queen! She is thine own deep love Rained down from heaven above; Wherever she rest or move, God save our Queen' Wilder her enemies In their own dark disguise; God save our Queen! All earthly things that dare Her sacred name to bear, Strip them, as kings are, bare; God save the Queen' Be her eternal throne Built in our hearts alone; God save the Queen! Let the oppressor hold She sits enthroned of old O'er our hearts Queen. Lips touched by seraphim Breathe out the choral hymn God save the Queen! Sweet as if angels sang, Loud as that trumpet's clang Wakening the world's dead gang; God save the Queen! Shelley had suffered severely from the death of our son during this summer. His heart, attuned to every kindly affection, was full of burning love for his offspring. No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were torn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the passing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes, besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father's love, which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences. It is as follows: TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. THY Country's curse is on thee, darkest crest Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold, Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne. And whilst that slow sure angel, which aye stands, Delays to execute her high commands, And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee; O let a father's curse be on thy soul, And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb, And both on thy gray head, a leaden cowl, To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom! I curse thee by a parent's outraged love, By hopes long cherished and too lately lost, *The Star-chamber. By those infantine smiles of happy light, Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth, Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night, Hiding the promise of a lovely birth: By those unpractised accents of young speech, Thou strike the lyre of mind! Oh grief and shame! By all the happy see in children's growth, That undeveloped flower of budding years, Sweetness and sadness interwoven both, Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears: By all the days under a hireling's care Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness, O wretched ye, if ever any were, Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless! By the false cant, which on their innocent lips, By thy most impious hell, and all its terrors; By thy complicity with lust and hate, Thy thirst for tears, thy hunger after gold, The ready frauds which ever on thee wait, The servile arts in which thou hast grown old: By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile, And for thou canst outweep the crocodile,- 19 By all the hate which checks a father's love, Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, And cry, My children are no longer mine; I curse thee, though I hate thee not; O slave! This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well! At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared that our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, every thing, and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes, and was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncontrollable emotions of his heart. The billows on the beach are leaping around it, The bark is weak and frail, The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it Darkly strew the gale. Come with me, thou delightful child, Come with me, though the wave is wild |