He heard

Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,
Sees its own treacherous likeness there.
The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung
Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel
An unaccustomed presence, and the sound
Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs
Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed
To stand beside him-clothed in no bright robes
Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,
Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ;-

But, undulating woods, and silent well,

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And leaping1 rivulet, and evening gloom

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Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
Held commune with him, as if he and it
Were all that was,-only . . . when his regard
Was raised by intense pensiveness, . . . two eyes,
Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
To beckon him.

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Obedient to the light

That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing
The windings of the dell.-The rivulet
Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine

1 Mr. Rossetti follows Mrs. Shelley's later editions (from 1839 onwards) in printing rippling rivulet for leaping rivulet. Why a critic should elect to credit Shelley with that piece of verbal mosaic, it is not easy to guess; but the means by which Mrs. Shelley arrived at the corruption are not far to seek. In the Posthumous Poems, the printer put reaping for leaping; and it is to be assumed that Mrs. Shelley, using that text for the preparation of the 1839 edition, saw there was a blunder, and attempted to set it right conjecturally, instead of

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referring to the text of her husband. Some of the readings restored in this poem would seem to indicate, however, that she was not without the original edition to refer to at need.

2 There is no comma at assuming in Shelley's and Mrs. Shelley's editions; but the sense, involved at the best, is inscrutable without the comma, which probably dropped out by accident. I take the passage to mean that the Spirit, assuming for speech the undulating woods, silent well, leaping rivulet, and evening gloom deepening the dark shades, communed with the Poet.

Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell

Among the moss with hollow harmony

Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
It danced; like childhood laughing as it went :
Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, 500
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud

That overhung its quietness.-'O stream!
Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,
Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulphs,
Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course
Have each their type in me: and the wide sky,
And measureless ocean may declare as soon
What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud
Contains thy waters, as the universe

Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched
Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste

I' the passing wind!'

Beside the grassy shore

Of the small stream he went; he did impress
On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught
Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one
Roused by some joyous madness from the couch
Of fever, he did move; yet, not like him,
Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame
Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
He must descend. With rapid steps he went
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now

The forest's solemn canopies were changed

For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.

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Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed The struggling brook: tall spires of windlestrae

Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
And nought but knarlèd1 roots of ancient pines
Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes
Had shone, gleam stony orbs-so from his steps
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued
The stream, that with a larger volume now
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there
Fretted a path through its descending curves
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles

In the light of evening, and its precipice2

1 Spelt with a k in Shelley's edition see note at p. 34.

2 This much-discussed passage has not yet been interpreted in a manner approaching satisfactoriness. Before Mr. Rossetti's edition came out, he proposed a reading which was disputed by Mr. Swinburne, and condemned on sufficient grounds, but persisted in by the emendator. By a strange fatality that seems to have pursued the works of Shelley up to the immediate past, this passage is mis-quoted in Mr. Swinburne's beautiful and invaluable essay, as are other passages : I extract as follows:

"The passage cited from 'Alastor' is, I believe, corrupt, but I cannot accept the critic's proposed change of punctuation. Here are the words disputed :

'On every side now rose Rocks which in unimaginable forms Lifted their black and barren pinnacles In the light of evening, and its precipice Obscuring the ravine disclosed above Mid toppling stones, black gulfs, and yawning streams,' &c.

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Mr. Rossetti in evident desperation
would rearrange the last line thus :-
'And-its precipice

Obscuring-the ravine disclosed above,' &c.
'i.e.' (he adds), 'the rocks, obscuring
the precipice (the precipitous descent)
of the ravine, disclosed said ravine
overhead.'

"This [I still quote Mr. Swinburne] I must say is intolerable and impossible. If the words could be wrenched and racked into such a meaning, we should have here from one of the mightiest masters of language the most monstrous example on record of verbal deformity, of distorted and convulsed inversion or perversion of words. I suspect the word 'its' to be wrong, and either a blind slip of the pen or a printer's error. If it is not, and we are to assume that there is any break in the sentence, the parenthesis must surely extend thus far-its precipice obscuring the ravine' -i.e., the rocks opened or 'disclosed' where the precipice above the ravine obscured it. But I take 'disclosed'

Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,

Mid toppling stones, black gulphs and yawning caves,
Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems, with its accumulated crags,

To overhang the world: for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
Dim tracts1 and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom

to be the participle; its precipice darkened the ravine (which was) disclosed above.' Then the sentence is left hanging loose and ragged, short by a line at least, and never wound up to any end at all."-Essays and Studies, 1875, pp. 196 and 197.

The passage is given in the text precisely as it stands in Shelley's edition: whence Mr. Swinburne obtained the yawning streams, and the punctuation of the lines, I cannot conjecture; but students have to thank him not only for defending the text against a ruinous new corruption, but also, probably, for finding the key to the lost right reading, in fixing the corruption of the received text on the word its, and insisting that disclosed is a participle here. I have not ventured to alter the text, because the reading I believe to be the true one might be deemed hazardous: it is this :

On every side now rose Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, Lifted their black and barren pinnacles In the light of evening, amidst precipices Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, Mid toppling stones, &c.

This reading leaves the sense clear and complete, namely that, as the poet traversed the widening valley or ravine, on every side rose rocks of unimaginable form, in the midst of precipices; that these rocks obscured the outline of the ravine, which, however, was disclosed above,—and that these rocks rose in the midst, not only of precipices, but also of

toppling stones, black gulphs, and yawning caves,

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The change proposed would have the advantage of clearing Shelley from the responsibility of omitting to revise his poem properly,-for the accepted corrupt reading might easily have occurred (according to my experience) by a printer's blunder in interpreting a final correction of previous blunders, -and it would also save us from the necessity of facing the possibility of the poet's having implied, as he would if Mr. Rossetti were correct, so great an improbability as the transportation of the echoing caves up to the top of the ravine. Miss Blind's proposal (Westminster Review, July, 1870), to read inclosed for disclosed, does not help us in the least to remove the obscurity or complete the sense.

1 Mr.

Rossetti (following Mrs. Shelley) prints tracks for tracts. He mentions, in a note, Mr. Garnett's statement (Relics of Shelley, p. 96), that the word should be tracts, and says he thinks Mr. Garnett is probably right, but as tracks would not be meaningless, he has not " felt safe in adopting Mr. Garnett's reading." Had he consulted Shelley's own text, he would have found that this was not Mr. Garnett's reading, but Shelley's. Unless there is a clear proof of Mrs. Shelley's authority for the change (and no one imagines that she had any), surely the preference should be given to Shelley's own published text.

Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills

Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
Of the remote horizon. The near scene,

In naked and severe simplicity,
Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
Yielding one only response, at each pause
In most familiar cadence, with the howl
The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river,
Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path,
Fell into that immeasurable void
Scattering its waters to the passing winds.

Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine And torrent, were not all;-one silent nook

Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,

It overlooked in its serenity

The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
And did embower with leaves for ever green,
And berries dark, the smooth and even space
Of its inviolated floor, and here

The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,

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In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,
Red, yellow, or etherially pale,

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Rivals1 the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt

Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,

1 Mrs. Shelley's editions give riral for rivals.