How meet with fewest tears the morning's ray,

How sleep with calmest dreams, how find delights,
As fire-flies gleam through interlunar nights ?2

First let me call on thee! Lost as thou art,
Thy name aye fills my sense, thy love my heart.
Oh, gentle Spirit thou hast often sung,
How fallen on evil days thy heart was wrung;
Now fierce remorse and unreplying death
Waken a chord within my heart, whose breath,
Thrilling and keen, in accents audible
A tale of unrequited love doth tell.

It was not anger,-while thy earthly dress
Encompassed still thy soul's rare loveliness,
All anger was atoned by many a kind

Caress or tear, that spoke the softened mind.—
It speaks of cold neglect, averted eyes,

That blindly crushed thy soul's fond sacrifice :-
My heart was all thine own, but yet a shell
Closed in it's core, which seemed impenetrable,
Till sharp-toothed1 misery tore the husk in twain,
Which gaping lies, nor may unite again.*
Forgive me! let thy love descend in dew

Of soft repentance and regret most true;

1 No hyphen in the MS.

There is no note of interrogation in the MS.; but the sense obviously needs one.

There was originally a comma at thee. The note of exclamation was an afterthought. I presume it was meant to separate this sentence from the

next, and have therefore printed lost
with a
capital.

I cannot regard this passage as indicating anything more than a natural feeling of remorse in the noble heart of a woman who has suddenly lost an idolized husband, and fancies all kinds of deficiencies in her conduct to him.

In a strange guise thou dost descend, or how

Could love soothe fell remorse, as it does now ?-1

By this remorse and love,-and by the years

Through which we shared our common hopes and fears,

By all our best companionship, I dare

Call on thy sacred name without a fear;—

And thus I pray to thee, my friend, my Heart!
That in thy new abode, thou'lt bear a part2

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In soothing thy poor Mary's lonely pain,

As link by link she weaves her heavy chain !—

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And thou, strange star! ascendant at my birth,
Which rained, they said, kind influence on the earth,
So from great parents sprung, I dared to boast
Fortune my friend, till set, thy beams were lost!
And thou, Inscrutable, by whose decree

Has burst this hideous storm of misery!

Here let me cling, here to these solitudes,
These myrtle-shaded3 streams and chesnut woods;

Tear me not hence-here let me live and die,

In my adopted land-my country—Italy.

A happy Mother first I saw this sun, Beneath this sky my race of joy was run. First my sweet girl, whose face resembled his, Slept on bleak Lido, near Venetian seas.1

The alteration is in Mrs. Shelley's writing.

3 No hyphen in the MS.

Clara Shelley, who died in 1818. In the Shelley Memorials we read: "While they were at Este, their little

Yet still my eldest-born, my loveliest, dearest,

Clung to my side, most joyful then when nearest.
An English home had given this angel birth,
Near those royal1 towers, where the grass-clad2 earth
Is shadowed o'er by England's loftiest trees:-
Then our companion o'er the swift-passed2 seas,
He dwelt beside the Alps, or gently slept,
Rocked by the waves, o'er which our vessel swept,
Beside his father, nurst upon my breast,
While Leman's waters shook with fierce unrest.
His fairest limbs had bathed in Serchio's stream;
His eyes had watched Italian lightnings gleam ;
His childish voice had, with its loudest call,
The echoes waked of Este's castle wall;
Had paced Pompeii's Roman Market-place;2
Had gazed with infant wonder on the grace
Of stone-wrought2 deities, and pictured saints,
In Rome's high palaces :-there were no taints
Of ruin on his cheek-all shadowless

Grim death approached-the boy met his caress,
And while his glowing limbs with life's warmth shone,
Around those limbs his icy arms were thrown.

daughter, Clara, showed signs of suffering from the heat of the climate. Her indisposition being increased to an alarming extent by teething, the parents hastened to Venice for the best advice, but discovered at Fusina that, in their agitation, they had forgotten the passport. The soldiers on duty attempted to prevent their crossing the lagune; but Shelley, with

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his usual vehemence, augmented by the urgent nature of the case, broke through, and they reached Venice. Unhappily, it was too late; the little sufferer died just as they arrived."— Shelley Memorials, p. 95.

1 Originally ancient, but altered by Hunt to old, and finally by Mrs. Shelley to royal.

No hyphen in the MS.

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
Entrenched sad lines, or blotted with its might
The sunshine of thy smile's celestial light;—
The image shattered, the bright spirit fled,
Thou shin'st the evening star among the dead.2

And thou, his playmate, whose deep lucid eyes,
Were a reflection of these bluest skies;
Child of our hearts, divided in ill hour,
We could not watch the bud's expanding flower,
Now thou art gone, one guileless victim more,
To the black death that rules this sunny shore.3

Companion of my griefs! thy sinking frame
Had often drooped, and then erect again

With shews of health had mocked forebodings dark;—
Watching the changes of that quivering spark,
I feared and hoped, and dared to trust at length,

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

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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.

Methought thou wert a spirit from the sky,

Which struggled with it's chains, but could not die, 110
And that destruction had no power to win

From out those limbs the soul that burnt within.—
Tell me, ye ancient walls, and weed-grown towers,
Ye Roman airs and brightly painted flowers,
Does not his spirit visit that recess

Which built of love enshrines his earthly dress?
-No more no more!-what though that form be fled,
My trembling hand shall never write thee-dead-

Thou liv'st in Nature, Love, my Memory,

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,
Shall, like the notes of music once most dear,
Which brings the unstrung voice upon my ear
Of one beloved, to memory display

Past scenes, past hopes, past joys, in long array.
Pugnano's trees, beneath whose shade he stood,
The pools reflecting Pisa's old pine wood,
The fire-flies'2 beams, the aziola's cry

All breathe his spirit which can never die.
Such memories have linked these hills and caves,

1 No hyphen in the MS.

2 Fire flies in the MS.

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