How meet with fewest tears the morning's ray, How sleep with calmest dreams, how find delights, First let me call on thee! Lost as thou art, It was not anger,-while thy earthly dress Caress or tear, that spoke the softened mind.— That blindly crushed thy soul's fond sacrifice :- 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 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! 45 In soothing thy poor Mary's lonely pain, As link by link she weaves her heavy chain !— 50 And thou, strange star! ascendant at my birth, Has burst this hideous storm of misery! Here let me cling, here to these solitudes, 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. Grim death approached-the boy met his caress, 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 65 70 75 80 85 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 And thou, his playmate, whose deep lucid eyes, Companion of my griefs! thy sinking frame With shews of health had mocked forebodings dark;— 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 90 35 95 100 105 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 From out those limbs the soul that burnt within.— Which built of love enshrines his earthly dress? 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, Past scenes, past hopes, past joys, in long array. All breathe his spirit which can never die. 1 No hyphen in the MS. 2 Fire flies in the MS. 115 120 125 130 |