His spoils were strewed beneath the soil1 of Rome, Whose flowers now star the dark earth near his tomb: It's airs and plants received the mortal part, His spirit beats within his mother's heart. Infant immortal! chosen for the sky! No grief upon thy brow's young purity And thou, his playmate, whose deep lucid eyes, Child of our hearts, divided in ill hour, Companion of my griefs! thy sinking frame 90 96 95 100 With shews of health had mocked forebodings dark;— 105 1 This and the following line are printed as they originally stood in the MS. The words soil, earth, and land are written in and cancelled in such a way as to leave a doubt which were finally adopted land is in line 87, in Hunt's writing. 2 William Shelley died at Rome in 1819, while Shelley was engaged in composing The Cenci,-a tragic inter ruption of his tragedy, which, as Lady Shelley says (Memorials, p. 115),"drove the broken-hearted parents to the neighbourhood of Leghorn, where they took a small house (Villa Valsovano), about half way between the city and Monte Nero." 3 This refers to Allègra, or Alba, as she is sometimes called the daughter of Miss Claire Clairmont and Byron. Thy very weakness was my tower of strength. From out those limbs the soul that burnt within.- Which built of love enshrines his earthly dress? With deathless faith for aye adoring thee, The wife of Time no more, I wed Eternity. 'Tis thus the Past-on which my spirit leans, Makes dearest to my soul Italian scenes. In Tuscan fields the winds in odours steeped From flowers and cypresses, when skies have wept, Past scenes, past hopes, past joys, in long array. All breathe his spirit which can never die. Such memories have linked these hills and caves, 1 No hyphen in the MS. 2 Fire flics in the MS. 110 115 120 125 130 These woodland paths, and streams, and knelling waves 135 Fast to each sad pulsation of my breast, And made their melancholy arms the haven of my rest. Here will I live, within a little dell, Which but a month ago1 I saw full well: A dream then pictured forth the solitude A voice then whispered a strange prophecy, My dearest, widowed friend,2 that thou and I As we before have done in Spezia's bay, 140 145 As through long hours we watched the sails that neared O'er the far sea, their3 vessel ne'er appeared; One pang of agony, one dying gleam Of hope led us along, beside the ocean stream, 1 This would seem to indicate that the poem was composed within two or three weeks of Shelley's death,—in which case, sad revolving year, in line 152, must be taken merely as referring to the lapse of time, not the lapse of a year. 2 Mrs. Williams,-the "Jane" of Shelley's exquisite song, "The keen stars were twinkling." 150 155 3 That originally, but altered to their in Mrs. Shelley's writing. 4 Williams, who was drowned with Shelley. 5 Leigh Hunt suggests as an emendation, thou too! thou too!... for thy voice was hushed; but, as the pen has not been drawn through either of the readings, I leave Mrs. Shelley's in the text. With aspiration heaves no more-a part 1 The word the is inserted after Of in Hunt's writing: it does not seem to me an improvement. 2 I cannot find a more appropriate place than the present in which to give the little poem by Mrs. Shelley, originally published in The Keepsake for 1831, and entitled A DIRGE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "FRANKENSTEIN." This morn, thy gallant bark, love, Ah, woe! ah, woe! ah, woe! Thou liest upon the shore, love, Beside the swelling surge; But sea-nymphs ever more, love, O come! O come! O come I hear a wild lament, In her first collected edition of Shelley's Poetical Works (1839), Mrs. Shelley headed the Notes to the Poems of 1822 with a revised version of this Dirge; varying sufficiently from the original to make it quite worth while to rescue the earlier version. |