II

Dark is the realm of grief: but human things
Those may not know who cannot weep for them.

III

Once more descend
The shadows of my soul upon mankind,

For to those hearts with which they never blend,
Thoughts are but shadows which the flashing mind
From the swift clouds which track its flight of fire,
Casts on the gloomy world it leaves behind.

'O THAT A CHARIOT OF CLOUD WERE MINE' [Published by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.]

O THAT a chariot of cloud were mine!

Of cloud which the wild tempest weaves in air,
When the moon over the ocean's line

Is spreading the locks of her bright gray hair.

O that a chariot of cloud were mine!

I would sail on the waves of the billowy wind
To the mountain peak and the rocky lake,
And the...

FRAGMENT: TO A FRIEND RELEASED FROM
PRISON

[Published by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.]
For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble
In my faint eyes, and that my heart beat fast
With feelings which make rapture pain resemble,
Yet, from thy voice that falsehood starts aghast,
I thank thee-let the tyrant keep

His chains and tears, yea, let him weep
With rage to see thee freshly risen,

Like strength from slumber, from the prison,

In which he vainly hoped the soul to bind
Which on the chains must prey that fetter humankind.

FRAGMENT: SATAN BROKEN LOOSE
[Published by Rossetti, Complete P. W. of P. B. S., 1870.]
A GOLDEN-WINGED Angel stood

Before the Eternal Judgement-seat:
His looks were wild, and Devils' blood
Stained his dainty hands and feet.

The Father and the Son

Knew that strife was now begun.

They knew that Satan had broken his chain,
And with millions of daemons in his train,
Was ranging over the world again.
Before the Angel had told his tale,

A sweet and a creeping sound

Like the rushing of wings was heard around;
And suddenly the lamps grew pale-

The lamps, before the Archangels seven,
That burn continually in Heaven.

FRAGMENT: IGNICULUS DESIDERII

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 1st ed. This fragment is amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian. See Mr. C. D. Locock's Examination, &c., 1903, p. 63.]

To thirst and find no fill-to wail and wander
With short unsteady steps-to pause and ponder-
To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle
Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle;
To nurse the image of unfelt caresses

Till dim imagination just possesses

The half-created shadow, then all the night
Sick.

...

ΤΟ

15

5

FRAGMENT: AMOR AETERNUS
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 1st ed.]
WEALTH and dominion fade into the mass

Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When once from our possession they must pass;
But love, though misdirected, is among

The things which are immortal, and surpass

All that frail stuff which will be-or which was.

FRAGMENT: THOUGHTS COME AND GO IN
SOLITUDE

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 1st ed.]

My thoughts arise and fade in solitude,

The verse that would invest them melts away
Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day:
How beautiful they were, how firm they stood,
Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl!

Igniculus, &c.-2 unsteady B.; uneasy 1839, 1st ed.
Sick B.; wanting, 1839, 1st ed.

7, 8 then..

5

5

A HATE-SONG

[Published by Rossetti, Complete P. W. of P. B. S., 1870.]

A HATER he came and sat by a ditch,

And he took an old cracked lute;

And he sang a song which was more of a screech
'Gainst a woman that was a brute.

LINES TO A CRITIC

[Published by Hunt in The Liberal, No. III, 1823. Reprinted in Posthumous Poems, 1824, where it is dated December, 1817.]

[Published by Hunt in Rosalind and Helen, 1819.

5

OZYMANDIAS

The Examiner, January, 1818. Reprinted with There is a copy amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C. D. Locock's Examination, &c., 1903, p. 46.]

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

5

10

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

Ozymandias.—9 these words appear] this legend clear Bosch

Here - Here, Noy Donena Know It's

sthing

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY MRS. SHELLEY

THE very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had approached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year. The Revolt of Islam, written and printed, was a great effort-Rosalind and Helen was begunand the fragments and poems I can trace to the same period show how full of passion and reflection were his solitary hours.

In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, and desire to trace its workings.

He projected also translating the Hymns of Homer; his version of several of the shorter ones remains, as well as that to Mercury already published in the Posthumous Poems. His readings this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the Hymns of Homer and the Iliad, he read the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the Symposium of Plato, and Arrian's Historia Indica. In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In English, the Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of it aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings I find also mentioned the Faerie Queen; and other modern works, the production of his contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and Byron. His life was now spent more in thought than action-he had lost the eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the benefit

The

of mankind. And yet in the converse
of daily life Shelley was far from being
a melancholy man. He was eloquent
when philosophy or politics or taste
were the subjects of conversation. He
was playful; and indulged in the wild
spirit that mocked itself and others—
not in bitterness, but in sport.
author of Nightmare Abbey seized on
some points of his character and some
habits of his life when he painted
Scythrop. He was not addicted to
port or madeira,' but in youth he had
read of Illuminati and Eleutherarchs,'
and believed that he possessed the
power of operating an immediate change
in the minds of men and the state of
society. These wild dreams had faded ;
sorrow and adversity had struck home;
but he struggled with despondency as
he did with physical pain. There are
few who remember him sailing paper
boats, and watching the navigation of
his tiny craft with eagerness-or re-
peating with wild energy The Ancient
Mariner, and Southey's Old Woman of
Berkeley; but those who do will recollect
that it was in such, and in the creations
of his own fancy when that was most
daring and ideal, that he sheltered him-
self from the storms and disappoint-
ments, the pain and sorrow, that beset
his life.

No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were torn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the passing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes, besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father's love, which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences.

At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared that our infant son

would be torn from us. He did not trollable emotions of his heart. I ought hesitate to resolve, if such were me- to observe that the fourth verse of this naced, to abandon country, fortune, everything, and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes, and was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncon- crushes the affections.'

effusion is introduced in Rosalind and Helen. When afterwards this child died at Rome, he wrote, à propos of the English burying-ground in that city: This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death. My beloved child lies buried here. I envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818

TO THE NILE

[Found by Mr. Townshend Meyer among the papers of Leigh Hunt, [and] published in the St. James's Magazine for March, 1876.' (Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B.; P. W. of P. B. S., Library Edition, 1876, vol. iii, p. 410.) First included among Shelley's poetical works in Mr. Forman's Library Edition, where a facsimile of the MS. is given. Composed February 4, 1818. See Complete Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Glasgow, 1901, vol. iv, p. 76.]

MONTH after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,

And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles

Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.

5

Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells

O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level

And they are thine, O Nile-and well thou knowest
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil

And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man-for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES

10

[Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a copy amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment.]

LISTEN, listen, Mary mine,

To the whisper of the Apennine,

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,