Is Famine, but he drives not from his door

Those whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!"

LI.

As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength

Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth

She led, and over many a corpse :—at length
We came to a lone hut, where on the earth
Which made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth
Gathering from all those homes now desolate,
Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth
Among the dead-round which she set in state
A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.

LII.

She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high

Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried: "Eat!
Share the great feast-to-morrow we must die!"
And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet,
Towards her bloodless guests;-that sight to meet,
Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she
Who loved me, did with absent looks defeat
Despair, I might have raved in sympathy;
But now I took the food that woman offered me;

LIII.

And vainly having with her madness striven
If I might win her to return with me,
Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven
The lightning now grew pallid-rapidly,

As by the shore of the tempestuous sea
The dark steed bore me, and the mountain grey
Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see

Cythna among the rocks, where she alway

Had sate, with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day.

LIV.

And joy was ours to meet she was most pale,
Famished, and wet and weary, so I cast
My arms around her, lest her steps should fail
As to our home we went, and thus embraced,
Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste
Than e'er the prosperous know; the steed behind
Trod peacefully along the mountain waste,

We reached our home ere morning could unbind
Night's latest veil, and on our bridal couch reclined.1

LV.

Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom,
And sweetest kisses past, we two did share
Our peaceful meal-as an autumnal blossom
Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air,
After cold showers, like rainbows woven there,
Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit
Mantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere

Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it,
And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit.

1 Reclined is contracted into reclin'd in Shelley's edition,-I presume by

the printer, as such contractions are quite exceptional in that edition.

Canto Seventh.

I.

So we sate joyous as the morning ray
Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm
Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play
Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,
And we sate linked in the inwoven charm

Of converse and caresses sweet and deep,
Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm

Time, tho' he wield the darts of death and sleep, And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep.

II.

I told her of my sufferings and my madness, And how, awakened from that dreamy mood By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness Came to my spirit in my solitude; And all that now I was, while tears pursued Each other down her fair and listening cheek Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak, Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.

III.

She told me a strange tale of strange endurance,
Like broken memories of many a heart

Woven into one; to which no firm assurance,

So wild were they, could her own faith impart.

She said that not a tear did dare to start

From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm When from all mortal hope she did depart,

Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term, And that she reached the port without one fear infirm.

IV.

One was she among many there, the thralls
Of the cold Tyrant's1 cruel lust and they
Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;
But she was calm and sad, musing alway
On loftiest enterprise, till on a day

The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute

A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,

Like winds that die in wastes-one moment mute The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute.

V.

Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,
One moment to great Nature's sacred power
He bent, and was no longer passionless;
But when he bade her to his secret bower
Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore
Her locks in agony, and her words of flame
And mightier looks availed not; then he bore
Again his load of slavery, and became

A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

1 In this case tyrant is spelt with a small t in the original edition, though with a capital in line 6 of the same

stanza. This cannot, of course, be intentional.

2 Wonderous in Shelley's edition.

VI.

She told me what a loathsome agony

Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,
Foul as in dream's most fearful imagery
To dally with the mowing dead—that night
All torture, fear, or horror made seem light
Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day
Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight

Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay
Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.

VII.

Her madness was a beam of light, a power

Which dawned thro' the rent soul; and words it gave
Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore
Which might not be withstood, whence none could save
All who approached their sphere, like some calm wave
Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;2
And sympathy made each attendant slave

Fearless and free, and they began to breathe

Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

1 Dreams, without the apostrophe, in Shelley's edition.

2 The sense of this much-canvassed passage seems to me to be perfectly clear, namely," it (her madness) gave to looks and gestures such words as bore (upon all opposing forces) in whirlwinds which might not be withstood, and from the effect of which none could save or guard all those (fellow slaves) who approached the sphere of their operation, which sphere (the harem) was like some calm wave. vexed into whirlpools." The expression bore in whirlwinds, which Mr. Rossetti pronounces nonsense, I take to be parallel to such phrases as came in torrents; and nothing would be

said against a poet's talking of even gusts of eloquent speech: why not whirlwinds then? Looks such as in whirlwinds lour, Mr. Rossetti's proposed "emendation," would, it seems to me, make nonsense of the passage. Mr. Swinburne's explanation, as interpreted by Mr. Rossetti, seems to need the insertion of a comma after and words it gave; but I feel sure the sense is not that her madness " gave words, gestures, and looks" &c., but that it gave eloquence to her gestures and looks, as explained above. Mr. Swinburne's own remarks (Essays and Studies, page 193) are confined to giving bore the sense of "bore onward or forward."