The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured
A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge
That overflowed its mountains.

Yellow mist

Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
Wan moonlight even to fullness: not a star
Shone, not a sound was heard; the very Winds,
Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
Slept, clasped in his embrace.-O`storm of Death,
Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night !
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
Guiding its irresistible career,

In thy devastating omnipotence,

Art king of this frail world! from the red field
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee! Ruin calls
His brother Death! A rare and regal prey
He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
Glutted with which, thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

When on the threshold of the green recess

The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,

Did he resign his high and holy soul

To images of the majestic past,

That paused within his passive being now,

Like winds that bear sweet music when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber.

He did place

His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm ;—and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses

The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,
The torturers, slept : no mortal pain or fear
Marred his repose; the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed

The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests; and still, as the divided frame
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,

That ever beat in mystic sympathy

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feeller still.
And, when two lessening points of light alone
Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

The stagnate night :-till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
It paused-it fluttered. But, when heaven remained
Utterly black, the murky shades involved

An image silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapour, fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame-
No sense, no motion, no divinity—

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream
Once fed with many-voiced waves (a dream

Of youth which night and time have quenched for ever),
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

Oh for Medea's wondrous alchemy,

Which, wheresoe'er it fell, made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh that God,
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death! Oh that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible
For life and power even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world!-But thou art fled,
Like some frail exhalation which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,—ah ! thou hast fled !
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius! Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty earth,
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice :- but thou art fled-
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not! Upon those pallid lips,
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
That image sleep in death, upon that form

Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed-not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse mourning the memory
Of that which is nc more, or painting's woe,
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe "too deep for tears" when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope,-
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

Οσαις δὲ βροτὸν ἔθνος ἀγλαίαις ἁπτόμεσθα
Περαίνει πρὸς ἔσχατον

Πλόον ναυσὶ δ ̓ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰὼν ἂν εὕροις
Ες ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.

Πινδ. Πυθ. Χ.

DEDICATION.

There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is: there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.

CHAPMAN.

TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY. 1. So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,

And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
As to his Queen come victor Knight of Faery,
Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome.
Nor thou disdain that, ere my fame become
A star among the stars of mortal night

(If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom), Its doubtful promise thus I would unite

With thy belovèd name, thou child of love and light.

2. The toil which stole from thee so many an hour
Is ended-and the fruit is at thy feet.
No longer where the woods to frame a bower
With interlaced branches mix and meet,

Or where, with sound like many voices sweet,
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green

Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen: But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.

3. Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.

I do remember well the hour which burst

My spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why: until there rose

From the near schoolroom voices that, alas !
Were but one echo from a world of woes-
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
4. And then I clasped my hands, and looked around;
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground.
So, without shame, I spake :-"I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize

Without reproach or check. I then controlled
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.
5. And from that hour did I with earnest thought

Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore ;
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn-but from that secret store'
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind.

Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more
Within me; till there came upon my mind

A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 6. Alas that love should be a blight and snare

To those who seek all sympathies in one!— Such once I sought in vain. Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.

Yet never found I one not false to me,

Hard hearts and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crushed and withered mine-that could not be Aught but a lifeless clod, until revived by thee.

7. Thou friend, whose presence on my wintry heart Fell like bright Spring upon some herbless plain, How beautiful and calm and free thou wert

In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain

E

!