Are all combined in Horace Smith.-And these,
With some exceptions, which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on,—are all
You and I know in London.

I recall

My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight
Fills the void, hollow, universal air-
What see you?-unpavilioned Heaven is fair,
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep:
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,

:

And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast :-
All this is beautiful in every land.-

But what see you beside?-a shabby stand

Of Hackney coaches-a brick house or wall

Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics;-or worse-

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255

260

265

A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse

Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade,
You must accept in place of serenade-

270

Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring

To Henry, some unutterable thing.

I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit

Built round dark caverns, even to the root

275

Of the living stems that feed them in whose bowers

There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,,
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way;-
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,

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285

Rude, but made sweet by distance-and a bird
Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour;-and then all is still-
Now-Italy or London, which you will!

Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have
My house by that time turned into a grave

Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,

290

288 the

272, 273 found in the 2nd ed. of P. W., 1839; wanting in transcript, ed. 1824 and 1839, 1st. ed. 276 that transcript; who edd. 1824, 1839. transcript; a edd. 1824, 1839.

And all the dreams which our tormentors are;

295

Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,

With everything belonging to them fair!

We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;

And ask one week to make another week
As like his father, as I'm unlike mine,
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,-

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305

Feasting on which we will philosophize!

And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,

To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk ;—what shall we talk about?
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant;-as to nerves—
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me when you are with me there.
And they shall never more sip laudanum,
From Helicon or Himeros1;-well, come,
And in despite of God and of the devil,
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel

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315

Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers
Warn the obscure inevitable hours,

320

Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew ;-
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.'

THE WITCH OF ATLAS

[Composed at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 14-16, 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, ed. Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The dedication To Mary first appeared in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st ed. Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps, 1824; (2) edd. 1839 (which agree, and, save in two instances, follow ed. 1824); (3) an early and incomplete MS. in Shelley's handwriting (now at the Bodleian, here, as throughout, cited as B.), carefully collated by Mr. C. D. Locock, who printed the results in his Examination of the Shelley MSS., etc., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903; (4) a later, yet intermediate, transcript by Mrs. Shelley, the variations of which are noted by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. The original text is modified in many places by variants from the MSS., but the readings of ed. 1824 are, in every instance, given in the footnotes.]

296 See notes at end. 299, 300 So 1839, 2nd ed.; wanting in edd. 1824, 1839, 1st. 301 So transcript; wanting in edd. 1824, 1839. 317 well, come 1839, 2nd ed.; we'll come edd. 1824, 1839, 1st. 318 despite of God] transcript; despite of... ed. 1824; spite of... edd. 1839. "Iμepos, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonym of Love.-[SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

TO MARY

(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST)

I

How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

II

What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,

Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

III

To thy fair feet a wingèd Vision came,

Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame.
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way-
And that is dead.-O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!

IV

Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;"

Watering his laurels with the killing tears

Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell

ΤΟ

5

15

20

25

Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well 30
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil

The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.

V

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons-but she matches Peter,

35

Though he took nineteen years, and she three days

In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.'

40

VI

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:

A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin,-if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.

THE WITCH OF ATLAS

BEFORE those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,

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50

Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth

All those bright natures which adorned its prime,

And left us nothing to believe in, worth

The pains of putting into learned rhyme,

A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain
Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.

II

Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden

55

In the warm shadow of her loveliness;

In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden

60

The chamber of gray rock in which she lay

She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

III

"Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour, And then into a cloud, such clouds as fit,

He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden

65

Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,

Round the red west when the sun dies in it:

Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
With that bright sign the billows to indent
The sea-deserted sand-like children chidden,
At her command they ever came and went--
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.
65 first was transcript, B.; was first ed. 1824.

75

80

A lovely lady garmented in light

From her own beauty-deep her eyes, as are Two openings of unfathomable night

Seen through a Temple's cloven roof-her hair Dark-the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar, And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new.

VI

And first the spotted cameleopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame

Of his own volumes intervolved;-all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
Such gentleness and power even to behold.

VII

The brinded lioness led forth her young,

That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know

With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.

VIII

And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick

Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:

And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,

Teasing the God to sing them something new; Till in this cave they found the lady lone, Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.

IX

And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,

And though none saw him,-through the adamant Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air, And through those living spirits, like a want,

He passed out of his everlasting lair

Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant, And felt that wondrous lady all alone,

And she felt him, upon her emerald throne.

84 Temple's transcript, B.; tempest's ed. 1824.

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120