No storm can overwhelm ; I sailed where ever flows Under the calm Serene A spirit of deep emotion, From the unknown graves Of the dead kings of Melody*. Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm The horizontal æther; heaven stript bare Its depths over Elysium, where the prow Made the invisible water white as snow; From that Typhæan mount, Inarime,

Of some ethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate-

They seize me-I must speak them;-be they fate!

STROPHE a. 1.

NAPLES! thou Heart of men, which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven !
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up unstained
To Love, the flower-enchained!

Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail.
Hail, hail, all hail !

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;
Nor let thy high heart fail,

Though from their hundred gates the leagued
Oppressors,

With hurried legions move!
Hail, hail, all hail !

ANTISTROPHE a.

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce
gleam

To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer;
A new Acton's error

Shall theirs have been-devoured by their own
Be thou like the imperial Basilisk, [hounds!
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!

ANTISTROPHE B. 2.

From Freedom's form divine, From Nature's inmost shrine,

Homer and Virgil.

From land to land re-echoed solemnly, Till silence became music? From the Eæan * To the cold Alps, eternal Italy Starts to hear thine! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice, laughs In light and music; widowed Genoa wan, By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, Murmuring, where is Doria? fair Milan, Within whose veins long ran The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the seal (If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail) Art Thou of all these hopes.-O hail!

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes

Of crags and thunder clouds?
See ye the banners blazoned to the day,

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;
An 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

On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating- [hoary
They come ! The fields they tread look black and
With fire-from their red feet the streams run
gory!

EPODE II. B.

Great Spirit, deepest Love! Which rulest and dost move

Exa, the Island of Circe.

+ The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan.

All things which live and are, within the Italian Who spreadest heaven around it, [shore; Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command

The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison!
From the Earth's bosom chill;

O bid those beams be each a blinding brand
Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison!
Bid the Earth's plenty kill!
Bid thy bright Heaven above

Whilst light and darkness bound it,
Be their tomb who planned
To make it ours and thine!

Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire-
Be man's high hope and unextinct desire
The instrument to work thy will divine!
Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leo-
And frowns and fears from Thee, [pards,
Would not more swiftly flee,

Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.-
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be
This City of thy worship, ever free!

DEATH.

DEATH is here, and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death-and we are death.

Death has set his mark and seal
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

First our pleasures die-and then
Our hopes, and then our fears-and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust-and we die too.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves, must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot-
Love itself would, did they not.

SUMMER AND WINTER.

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon-and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod, as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas! then for the homeless beggar old!

THE TOWER OF FAMINE *.

AMID the desolation of a city,
Which was the cradle, and is now the grave,
Of an extinguished people; so that pity
Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave
For bread, and gold, and blood: pain, linked to
Agitates the light flame of their hours, [guilt,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt:
There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers
Of solitary wealth! the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air

Are by its presence dimmed-they stand aloof,
And are withdrawn-so that the world is bare,
As if a spectre, wrapt in shapeless terror,
Amid a company of ladies fair

Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue,
The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,
Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.

And many passed it by with careless tread, Not knowing that a shadowy [ ] Tracks every traveller even to where the dead Wait peacefully for their companion new; But others, by more curious humour led,

Pause to examine,-these are very few, And they learn little there, except to know That shadows follow them where'er they go.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, In what depth of night or day

Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest Like the world's rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On the tree or billow?

SONNET.

YE hasten to the dead! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?
O thou quick Heart, which pantest to possess
All that anticipation feigneth fair!

Thou vainly curious Mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come,and whither thou mayestgo,
And that which never yet was known wouldst
know-

Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press
With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,
Seeking alike from happiness and woe

A refuge in the cavern of grey death?

O heart, and mind, and thoughts! What thing do you

Hope to inherit in the grave below?

AN ALLEGORY.

A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant

Stands yawning on the highway of the life Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt; Around it rages an unceasing strife

Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.

At Pisa there still exists the prison of Ugolino, which goes by the name of "La Torre della Fame:" in the adjoining building the galley-slaves are confined. situated near the Ponte al Mare on the Arno.

It is

LINES TO A REVIEWER.

ALAS! good friend, what profit can you see
In hating such a hateless thing as me?
There is no sport in hate where all the rage
Is on one side. In vain would you assuage
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile,
In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile
Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate.
Oh conquer what you cannot satiate!
For to your passion I am far more coy
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy
In winter noon.
Of your antipathy

If I am the Narcissus, you are free
To pine into a sound with hating me.

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.

There was something in Florence that disagreed 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 fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the sky-lark, 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.

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 days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey 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 liarly characteristic of his tastes-wildly fanciful, return, the Witch of Atlas. This poem is pecufull of brilliant imagery, and discarding human that his imagination suggested. interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas

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 aspirations 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,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others.

And when

I went among my kind, with triple brass
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful mass !

I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish, if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my per

suasions 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 paly 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.