XXXII. A soft and healing potion to my lips I joyed as those a human tone to hear, Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year. XXXIII. A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft Till in the azure East darkness again was piled. XXXIV. And then the night-wind steaming1 from the shore, Sent odours dying sweet across the sea, And the swift boat the little waves which bore,2 The myrtle blossoms starring the dim grove, Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove. M Canto Fourth. I. THE old man took the oars, and soon the bark Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone; It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark With blooming ivy trails was overgrown; Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown, And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood, Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown Within the walls of that grey tower, which stood A changeling of man's art, nursed amid Nature's brood. II. When the old man his boat had anchored, The duties of the dash in Shelley's system of punctuation are very varied; and instances such as this are to be seen in some of his MSS. There is another case in stanza II, Canto V (p. 174), Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced. III. The moon was darting through the lattices The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become. IV. The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,— A lonely lake, amid the forests vast And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth? V. Thus madness came again,-a milder madness, With supernatural shades of clinging sadness; That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe, By my sick couch was busy to and fro, Like a strong spirit ministrant of good: And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood. VI. He knew his soothing words to weave with skill That thrilling name had ceased to make me start, Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke- VII. Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled, Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thoughtThat heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not. VIII. That hoary man had spent his livelong age In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp 1 There is no stop here in Shelley's edition. Mrs. Shelley puts a full stop; but I think the colon more likely to be the one dropped out in the original edition. |