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.

III.

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 ecstasies.

IV.

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.

TO CONSTANTIA.

I.

THE rose that drinks the fountain dew
In the pleasant air of noon,

Grows pale and blue with altered hue-
In the gaze of the nightly moon;
For the planet of frost, so cold and bright,
Makes it wan with her borrowed light.

VOL. II.

L

II.

Such is my heart-roses are fair,
And that at best a withered blossom;
But thy false care did idly wear

Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom ;
And fed with love, like air and dew,
Its growth-

FRAGMENT: TO ONE SINGING.

My spirit like a charmèd bark 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.

LINES TO WILLIAM GODWIN.

MIGHTY eagle! thou that soarest
O'er the misty mountain forest,

And amid the light of morning
Like a cloud of glory hiest,
And when night descends defiest
The embattled tempests' warning!

TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR.

I.

THY Country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
Which rends our Mother's bosom-Priestly Pest!
Masked Resurrection of a buried Form!
II.

Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold,
Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown,
And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,

Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.

III.

And, whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands

Watching the beck of Mutability

Delays to execute her high commands,

And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,

IV.

O let a father's curse be on thy soul,

And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb; Be both, on thy grey head, a leaden cowl

To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom!

V.

I curse thee by a parent's outraged love,
By hopes long cherished and too lately lost,
By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove,
By griefs which thy stern nature never crost;

VI.

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;

VII.

By those unpractised accents of young speech,
Which he who is a father thought to frame
To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach-

Thou strike the lyre of mind! O grief and shame!

VIII.

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

IX.

By all the days under an hireling's care,
Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness,-
O wretched ye if ever any were,-

Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless!

X.

By the false cant which on their innocent lips
Must hang like poison on an opening bloom,
By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse
Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb--

XI.

By thy most impious Hell, and all its terror;
By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt
Of thine impostures, which must be their error-
That sand on which thy crumbling power is built-

XII.

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-

XIII.

By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile-
By all the arts and snares of thy black den,
And for thou canst outweep the crocodile-

By thy false tears-those millstones braining men

XIV.

By all the hate which checks a father's love-
By all the scorn which kills a father's care-
By those most impious hands which dared remove
Nature's high bounds-by thee-and by despair-

XV.

Yes, the despair which bids a father groan,

And cry-my children are no longer mineThe blood within those veins may be mine own, But-Tyrant-their polluted souls are thine;

XVI.

I curse thee-though I hate thee not-O slave!
If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming Hell
Of which thou art a dæmon, on thy grave

This curse should be a blessing.

Fare thee well!

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.

I.

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,

And the winds are loose, we must not, stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.

II.

They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
They have made them unfit for thee;

They have withered the smile and dried the tear
Which should have been sacred to me.
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,
And they will curse my name and thee
Because we are fearless and free.

III.

Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still

Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart,
Which thou with joy shalt fill,
With fairest smiles of wonder thrown
On that which is indeed our own,
And which in distant lands will be
The dearest playmate unto thee.

IV.

Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,
Or the priests of the evil faith;

They stand on the brink of that raging river,

Whose waves they have tainted with death. It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells, Around them it foams and rages and swells; And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.

V.

Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!
The rocking of the boat thou fearest,
And the cold spray and the clamour wild?-

There sit between us two, thou dearest-
Me and thy mother-well we know
The storm at which thou tremblest so,
With all its dark and hungry graves,
Less cruel than the savage slaves
Who hunt us o'er these sheltering waves.