FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAFT SHELLEY In a lone land, The world is now our dwelling-place; DEATH Where'er the earth one fading trace Of what was great and free does keep, 1. That is our home! ... 'They die — the dead return not — Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race Misery Shall our contented exile reap ; | Sits near an open grave and calls For who that in some happy place them over, His own free thoughts can freely chase A Youth with hoary hair and haggard By woods and waves can clothe his face eyeIn cynic smiles ? Child ! we shall. They are the names of kindred, friend weep. and lover, Which he so feebly calls— they all are 11 gone! This lament, Fond wretch, all dead, those vacant The memory of thy grievous wrong names alone, Will fade ... This most familiar scene, my pain--But genius is omnipotent These tombs alone remain. To hallow ... ON FANNY GODWIN | Misery, my sweetest friend-oh! weep no more! Her voice did quiver as we parted, Thou wilt not be consoled - I wonder Yet knew I not that heart was broken not! From which it came, and I departed For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's Heeding not the words then spoken. door Misery-O Misery, Watch the calm sunset with them, This world is all too wide for thee. and this spot Was even as bright and calm, but tran sitory, LINES And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary; That time is dead for ever, child, This most familiar scene, my pain These tombs alone remain. We look on the past OTHO couldst not be, Last of the Romans, though thy The stream we gazed on then, rolled by ; | memory claim Its waves are unreturning; From Brutus his own glory- and on But we yet stand thee Rests the full splendour of his sacred Those may not know who cannot fame; weep for them. Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail Amid his cowering senate with thy III name, Though thou and he were great-it will Once more descend avail The shadows of my soul upon manTo thine own fame that Otho's should kind, not fail. For to those hearts with which they never blend, Thoughts are but shadows which the 'Twill wrong thee not-thou wouldst, flashing mind if thou couldst feel, From the swist clouds which track its Abjure such envious fame - great flight of fire, Otho died Casts on the gloomy world it leaves Like thee--he sanctified his country's behind. steel, At once the tyrant and tyrannicide, In his own blood-a deed it was to FRAGMENT: A CLOUD. bring Tears from all men-though full of CHARIOT gentle pride, O THAT a chariot of cloud were mine! Such pride as from impetuous love may Of cloud which the wild tempest spring, weaves in air, That will not be refused its offering. When the moon over the ocean's line Is spreading the locks of her bright FRAGMENTS SUPPOSED TO gray hair. O that a chariot of cloud were mine! billowy wind Those whom nor power, nor lying faith, To the mountain peak and the rocky nor toil, lake, Nor custom, queen of many slaves, / And the ... makes blind, Have ever grieved that man should be u FRAGMENT: TO ONE FREED the spoil Of his own weakness, and with car FROM PRISON nest mind For me, my friend, if not that tears did Fed hopes of its redemption, these tremble recur In my faint eyes, and that my heart Chastened by deathsul victory now, beat fast and find | With feelings which make rapture pain Foundations in this foulest age, and stir resemble, Me whom they cheer to be their Yet, from thy voice that falsehood minister. starts aghast, II I thank thee-let the tyrant keep Dark is the realm of grief: but human His chains and tears, yea let him weep | With rage to see thee freshly risen, things bind Like strength from slumber, from the When once from our possession they prison, must pass; In which he vainly hoped the soul to But love, though misdirected, is among Which on the chains must prey that The things which are immortal, and fetter humankind. surpass | All that srail stuff which will be - or FRAGMENT: SATAN AT LARGE which was. A GOLDEN-WINGÈD Angel stood Before the Eternal Judgment-seat: FRAGMENT: THOUGHTS IN His looks were wild, and Devils' blood SOLITUDE My thoughts arise and fade in solitude, Knew that strife was now begun. The verse that would invest them They knew that Satan had broken his melts away chain, Like moonlight in the heaven of And with millions of demons in his spreading day : train, How beautiful they were, how firm they Was ranging over the world again. stood, Before the Angel had told his tale, Flecking the starry sky like woven A sweet and a creeping sound pearl ! Like the rushing of wings was heard around; And suddenly the lamps grew pale FRAGMENT: THE FIGHT The lamps, before the Archangels seven, WAS O’ER That burn continually in heaven. The fight was o’er: the flashing through the gloom FRAGMENT: UNSATISFIED Which robes the cannon as he wings a DESIRE tomb To thirst and find no fill—to wail and Had ceased. wander With short uneasy steps-to pause and A HATE-SONG ponder-To feel the blood run through the veins the blood run through the veins | A Hater he came and sat by a ditch, and tingle And he took an old cracked lute; Where busy thought and blind sensation And he sang a song which was more of mingle; a screech To nurse the image of unfelt caresses 'Gainst a woman that was a brute. Till dim imagination just possesses The half created shadow. LINES TO A CRITIC FRAGMENT: LOVE IMMORTAL WEALTH and dominion fade into the Honey from silkworms who can gather, mass | Or silk from the yellow bee? or the great sea of human right and | The grass may grow in winter weather wrong, As soon as hate in me. III NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY Hate men who cant, and men who pray, MRS. SHELLEY And men who rail like thee; The very illness that oppressed, and the An equal passion to repay aspect of death which had approached sa They are not coy like me. near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Or seek some slave of power and gold, Much was composed during this year. To be thy dear heart's mate, The Revolt of Islam, written and printed, Thy love will move that bigot cold was a great effort-Rosalind and Helen Sooner than me thy hate. was begun-and the fragments and poems I can trace to the same period show how IV full of passion and reflection were his solitary hours. A passion like the one I prove In addition to such poems as have an Cannot divided be; intelligible aim and shape, many a stray I hate thy want of truth and love idea and transitory emotion found imperHow should I then hate thee? fect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and with out implements of writing. I find many OZYMANDIAS such, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record ; while some of them, I met a traveller from an antique land broken and vague as they are, will appear Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, of stone and desire to trace its workings. Stand in the desert. Near them, on He projected also translating the Hymns the sand, of Homer; his version of several of the Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose shorter ones remains, as well as that to frown, Mercury already published in the PostAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold humous Poems. His readings this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the Hymns command, of Homer and the Iliad, he read the Tell that its sculptor well those passions Dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles, the read Symposium of Plato, and Arrian's Historia Which yet survive, stamped on these indica. In Latin, Apuleius alone is lifeless things, named. In English, the Bible was his The hand that mocked them and the constant study; he read a great portion of heart that fed : it aloud in the evening. Among these And on the pedestal these words appear: evening readings I find also mentioned the “ My name is Ozymandias, king of Faerie Queen; and other modern works, kings: the production of his contemporaries, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and Byron. despair !” His life was now spent more in thought than action-he had lost the eager spirit Nothing beside remains. Round the which believed it could achieve what it decay projected for the benefit of mankind. of that colossal wreck, boundless and And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley bare was far from being a melancholy man, The lone and level sands stretch far He was eloquent when philosophy or away. politics or taste were the subjects of conversation. He was playful; and indulged over bis wrongs and woes, and was in the wild spirit that mocked itself and impelled to shed the grace of his genius others — not in bitterness, but in sport. over the uncontrollable emotions of his The author of Nightmare Abbey seized on heart. I ought to observe that the fourth some points of his character and some verse of this effusion is introduced in habits of his life when he painted Scythrop. Rosalind and Helen. When afterwards He was not addicted to “port or madeira," this child died at Rome, he wrote, à propos but in youth he had read of “Illuminati of the English burying-ground in that and Eleutherarchs," and believed that he city: “This spot is the repository of a possessed the power of operating an im- sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a mediate change in the minds of men and parent's heart are now prophetic ; he is the state of society. These wild dreams rendered immortal by love, as his memory had faded; sorrow and adversity had is by death. My beloved child lies buried struck home; but he struggled with de- here. I envy death the body far less than spondency as he did with physical pain. the oppressors the minds of those whom There are few who remember him sailing they have torn from me. The one can paper boats, and watching the navigation only kill the body, the other crushes the of his tiny craft with eagerness - or re- affections." peating with wild energy The Ancient Mariner, and Southey's Old Woman of Berkeley; but those who do will recol-POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818 lect that it was in such, and in the creations of his own fancy when that was most TO THE NILE daring and ideal, that he sheltered himself | MONTH after month the gathered rains from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life. descend No words can express the anguish he Drenching yon secret Æthiopian dells, felt when his elder children were torn And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles from him. In his first resentment Where Frost and Heat in strange against the Chancellor, on the passing embraces blend of the decree, he had written a curse, On Atlas, fields of moist snow half in which there breathes, besides haughty depend. indignation, all the tenderness of a father's Girt there with blasts and meteors love, which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences. | By Nile's aerial urn, with rapid spells Tempest dwells At one time, while the question was Urging those waters to their mighty end. still pending, the Chancellor had said some words that seemed to intimate that O’er Egypt's land of Memory floods are Shelley should not be permitted the care level of any of his children, and for a moment And they are thine ( Nile--and well he feared that our infant son would be thou knowest torn from us. He did not hesitate to That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon And fruits and poisons spring where'er country, fortune, everything, and to escape thou flowest. with his child; and I find some unfinished Beware ( Man -- for knowledge must stanzas addressed to this son, whom after to thee wards we lost at Rome, written under the Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be. idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES were not written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the spon | Listen, listen, Mary mine, taneous outbursts of a man who brooded To the whisper of the Apennine, |