The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley

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
Deep in the shelter of a lovely wood;

A voice then whispered a strange prophecy,

My dearest, widowed friend,2 that thou and I
Should there together pass the weary day,

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,
But keen-eyed fear, the while all hope departs,
Stabbed with a million stings our heart of hearts.
The sad revolving year has not allayed
The poison of those bleeding wounds, or made
The anguish less of that corroding thought
Which has with grief each single moment fraught.
Edward, thy voice was hushed-thy noble heart

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

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 Of heaven-resumèd past thou art become, our far home.2

Thy spirit waits with his in

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,
Sail'd on the sunny sea;
'Tis noon, and tempests dark, love,
Have wreck'd it on the lee.

Ah, woe! ah, woe! ah, woe!
By spirits of the deep
He's cradled on the billow,
To his unwaking sleep!

Thou liest upon the shore, love, Beside the swelling surge;

But sea-nymphs ever more, love,
Shall sadly chant thy dirge.

O come! O come! O come
Ye spirits of the deep!
While near his sea-weed pillow,
My lonely watch I keep.
From far across the sea, love,
I hear a wild lament,
By Echo's voice, for thee, love,
From ocean's caverns sent:-

O list! O list! O list!
The spirits of the deep-

Loud sounds their wail of sorrow,
While I for ever weep!

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.

ALASTOR, OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE,

&c.

With aspiration heaves no more-a part Of heaven-resumèd past thou art become, our far home.2