Strange symphony, and in their branching veins The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. The beating of her heart was heard to fill The pauses of her music, and her breath Tumultuously accorded with those fits Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned, And saw by the warm light of their own life Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare, Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. His strong heart sunk1 and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet Her panting bosom... she drew back a while, Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, With frantic gesture and short breathless cry Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep, Like a dark flood suspended in its course, Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
Roused by the shock he started from his trance- The cold white light of morning, the blue moon Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,
So in Shelley's edition and in the Shelley's first edition of 1839 and Posthumous Poems, but sank in Mrs.
The mystery and the majesty of Earth, The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. The spirit of sweet human love has sent
A vision to the sleep of him who spurned Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade; He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas! Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined. Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost, In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,
That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, Lead only to a black and watery depth,
While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung, Where every shade which the foul grave exhales Hides its dead eye from the detested day, Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms? This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,3 The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung His brain even like despair.
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
With his still soul. At night the passion came,
1 Bound, in the Posthumous Poems. 2 Mr. Rossetti substitutes conducts, saying there is "an obvious violation of grammar"; but it is possible Shelley meant us to understand the rather outré construction, "Does the bright arch lead &c., while does death's blue vault conduct &c," while being used conjunctively, as in line 280 of The Dæmon of the World (see p. 70),
"Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues tremble to speak" there the ellipsis, a second which, is obvious; and if the case be not similar here, it is impossible to say whether he meant vaults conduct or vault conducts, or whether a whole line has dropped out.
3 The sense requires a colon instead of a comma at heart,
Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, And shook him from his rest, and led him forth Into the darkness.-As an eagle grasped
In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast Burn with the poison, and precipitates
Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight O'er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, Startling with careless step the moon-light snake, He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, Shedding the mockery of its vital hues Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud; Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, Day after day, a weary waste of hours, Bearing within his life the brooding care That ever fed on its decaying flame.
And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair Sered by the autumn of strange suffering
Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
As in a furnace burning secretly
From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,
Who ministered with human charity
His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,
Encountering on some dizzy precipice
That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused In its career: the infant would conceal His troubled visage in his mother's robe In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
To remember their strange light in many a dream Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe
That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path Of his departure from their father's door.
At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore.1 A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main.
His eyes pursued its flight. "Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here,
1 Mrs. Shelley's first reading of this passage (Posthumous Poems) shows considerable care and ingenuity:
At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes-a strong impulse urged His steps to the sea shore.
It evidently struck her that, as the poet was already on the lone Chorasmian shore, the last line and a half were explanatory of his being
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.
Startled by his own thoughts he looked around. There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints Swayed with the undulations of the tide.
A restless impulse urged him to embark
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;
For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the populous deep.
The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind
Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. Following his eager soul, the wanderer
Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft
On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.
As one that in a silver vision floats Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly
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