To be thus fair, by the few lines1 alone

Which thro' her floating locks and gathered cloke, 2

Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone:

None else beheld her eyes-in him they woke

Memories which found a tongue, as thus he silence broke.3

1 I can see no reason for questioning this word, or construing it, as Mr. Rossetti does, to mean "lines, rays, or pencils of light." It seems to me to mean simply such broken lines of her form as could be discerned through her hair and garment,—shone being used metaphorically, as a poet talks of anything beautiful shining

or beaming.

2 I presume Shelley preferred this unusual orthography on the ground of the commonplace associations of the word cloak as ordinarily spelt.

3 It is to be noted that, at this point, the poet ostensibly disappears, the remaining eleven cantos being uttered by Laon.

Canto Second.

I.

The star-light smile of children, the sweet looks
Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,
The murmur of the unreposing brooks,

And the green light which shifting overhead,
Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,
The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,
The lamp-light thro' the rafters cheerly spread,
And on the twining flax-in life's young hours
These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit's1 folded powers.

II.

In Argolis, beside the echoing sea,
Such impulses within my mortal frame
Arose, and they were dear to memory,
Like tokens of the dead:-but others came
Soon, in another shape: the wondrous fame

1 Spirits' in Shelley's edition.

Of the past world, the vital words and deeds.

Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame,

Traditions dark and old, whence evil creeds

Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.

III.

I heard, as all have heard, the various story
Of human life, and wept unwilling tears.
Feeble historians of its shame and glory,
False disputants on all its hopes and fears,
Victims who worshipped ruin,-chroniclers

Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state
Yet flattering power had given its ministers

A throne of judgment in the grave1:-'twas fate,
That among such as these my youth should seek its mate.

IV.

The land in which I lived, by a fell bane
Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,
And stabled in our homes,—until the chain
Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide

That blasting curse men had no shame-all vied
In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust,
Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,
Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,

Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.

V.

Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters, And the ætherial shapes which are suspended

1 This seems to me to mean "Slaves who loathed their slavery, yet, being habituated to flatter worldly powers, imagined similar powers sitting in judgment on them after death,' -a simple realistic theory of the idea of

eternal punishments and rewards. I can imagine that Shelley, in omitting the three commas required by grammar, did so to secure rapidity of passage to the final proposition.

Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters,
The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended
The colours of the air since first extended

It cradled the young world, none wandered forth
To see or feel: a darkness had descended

On every heart: the light which shews its worth, Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.

VI.

This vital world, this home of happy spirits,
Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind,
All that despair from murdered hope inherits
They sought, and in their helpless misery blind,
A deeper prison and heavier chains did find,
And stronger tyrants:—a dark gulph before,
The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,
Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore

On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.

VII.

Out of that Ocean's wrecks had Guilt and Woe
Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought,
And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro
Glide o'er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought
The worship thence which they each other taught.
Well might men loathe their life, well might they turn
Even to the ills again from which they sought

Such refuge after death!-well might they learn
To gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern !

VIII.

For they all pined in bondage: body and soul,
Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent

Before one Power, to which supreme controul

Over their will by their own weakness lent,
Made all its many names omnipotent;

All symbols of things evil, all divine; And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent The air from all its fanes, did intertwine Imposture's impious toils round each discordant shrine.

IX.

I heard as all have heard, life's various story,
And in no careless heart transcribed the tale;
But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary

In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale
By famine, from a mother's desolate wail

O'er her polluted child, from innocent blood
Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale
With the heart's warfare; did I gather food
To feed my many thoughts: a tameless multitude!

X.

I wandered thro' the wrecks of days departed
Far by the desolated shore, when even

O'er the still sea and jaggèd islets darted
The light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,
Among the clouds near the horizon driven,
The mountains lay beneath one planet pale;
Around me, broken tombs and columns riven
Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale
Waked in those ruins grey its everlasting wail!

XI.

I knew not who had framed these wonders then,
Nor, had I heard the story of their deeds;
But dwellings of a race of mightier men,
And monuments of less ungentle creeds