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

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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

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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.1

PART II

FRAGMENT I.

PRINCE Athanase had one belovèd friend,2

An old, old man, with hair of silver white,

And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend

With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.

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He was the last whom superstition's blight

Had spared in Greece-the blight that cramps and blinds,And in his olive bower at Enoe

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,"

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1 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. [SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

2 Said by Mrs. Shelley to be intended for Dr. Lind, Shelley's friend at Eton, who is also stated to be the

original of the hermit in Laon and Cythna.

And thus Zonoras, by forever 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

Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
And his wan visage and his withered mien
Yet calm and gentle and majestical..

And Athanase, her child, who must have been
Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
In patient silence.

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FRAGMENT II.

SUCH was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
Ône1 amaranth glittering on the path of frost,
When autumn nights have nipt all weaker kinds,

Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tost,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,

The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.

And sweet and subtle talk they3 evermore,
The pupil and the master shared; until,
Sharing that undiminishable store,

The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill

Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill

Strange truths and new to that experienced man;
Still they were friends, as few have ever been
Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.

So in the caverns of the forest green,
Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen

1 An in the Posthumous Poems; but One in the collected editions.

2 In the collected editions, through:

in the Posthumous Poems, had.

So in the Posthumous Poems; in Mrs. Shelley's other editions, now is

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By summer woodmen; and when winter's roar
Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war,
The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,

Hanging upon the peakèd wave afar,

Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,
Piercing the stormy darkness like a star,

Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,
Whilst all the constellations of the sky

Seemed reeling through the storm. They did but seem

For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing,
And far o'er southern waves, immovably

Belted Orion hangs-warm light is flowing

From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.— "O, summer eve! with power divine, bestowing

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"On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness, Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm

"Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness, Were lulled by thee, delightful nightingale!

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And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,

"And the far sighings of yon piny dale

Made vocal by some wind, we feel not here,

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I bear alone what nothing may avail

1 In the Posthumous Poems, night; in later editions, eve.