Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;

Labour and pain and grief, in life's green grove,

Sport like tame beasts,-none knew how gentle they could be!

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,-
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,—

Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm

Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm, Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass

Of marble and of colour his dreams pass,

Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children

wear;

Language is a perpetual Orphic song

Which rules with dadal harmony a throng

Of thoughts and forms which else senseless and shapeless were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on.
The tempest is his steed; he strides the air,

And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,

"Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none." THE MOON.

The shadow of white death has passed
From my path in heaven at last,

A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers
Wander happy paramours,

Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep.

THE EARTH.

-As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold A half infrozen dew-globe, green and gold And crystalline, till it becomes a wingèd mist, And wanders up the vault of the blue day, Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

THE MOON.

Thou art folded, thou art lying,
In the light which is undying

Of thine own joy and heaven's smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower

On thee a light, a life, a power,

Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!

THE EARTH.

I spin beneath my pyramid of night,

Which points into the heavens,-dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,

Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.
THE MOON.

As, in the soft and sweet eclipse

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,

High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;

So, when thy shadow falls on me,

Then am I mute and still, by thee Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, Full, oh! too full !

Thou art speeding round the sun,
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of heaven
To whom light and life is given.
I, thy crystal paramour,
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar paradise,
Magnet-like, of lovers' eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like, around thee move-
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side-
Like a Mænad round the cup
Which Agave lifted up

In the weird Cadmæan forest.
Brother, whereso'er thou soarest,
I must hurry, whirl, and follow,

Through the heavens wide and hollow;
Sheltered by the warm embrace

Of thy soul from hungry space,
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might;—
As a lover or chameleon

Grows like what it looks upon;

As a violet's gentle eye

Gazes on the azure sky

Until its hue grows like what it beholds;

As a grey and watery mist

Glows like solid amethyst

Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,
When the sunset sleeps

Upon its snow,

And the weak day weeps

That it should be so.

THE EARTH.

O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman borne the summer night
Through isles for ever calm;

O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.

Panthea. I rise-as from a bath of sparkling water,

A bath of azure light among dark rocks—

Out of the stream of sound.

Ione.

Ah me! sweet sister,

The stream of sound has ebbed away from us;

And you pretend to rise out of its wave,

Because your words fall like the clear soft dew

Shaken from a bathing Wood-nymph's limbs and hair. Panthea. Peace, peace! A mighty Power which is as darkness,

Is rising out of earth, and from the sky

Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight. The bright visions,
Wherein the singing Spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.

Oh! list!

Ione. There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
Panthea. An universal sound like words.
DEMOGORGON.

Thou Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,
Beautiful orb, gathering as thou dost roll

The love which paves thy path along the skies!
THE EARTH.

I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON.

Thou Moon which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;

Whilst each, to men and beasts and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony!

THE MOON.

I hear I am a leaf shaken by thee.

DEMOGORGON.

Ye Kings of Suns and Stars! Dæmons and Gods,
Etherial Dominations! who possess

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes

Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness!
A VOICE FROM ABOVE.

Our great Republic hears; we are blessed, and bless.

DEMOGORGON.

Ye happy Dead! whom beams of brightest verse

Are clouds to hide, not colours to pourtray, Whether your nature is that universe

Which once ye saw and suffered

A VOICE FROM BENEATH.

Or, as they

Whom we have left, we change and pass away

DEMOGORGON.

Ye elemental Genii, who have homes

From man's high mind even to the central stone Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on!

A CONFUSED VOICE.

We hear thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON.

Spirits whose homes are flesh! ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms and fish, ye living leaves and buds,
Lightning and wind! and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes!

A VOICE.

Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.
DEMOGORGON.

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave ;

A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;

A traveller from the cradle to the grave

Through the dim night of this immortal day!

ALL.

Speak! thy strong words may never pass away.

DEMOGORGON.

This is the day which down the void abysm,

At the Earth-born's spell, yawns for Heaven's despotism,
And conquest is dragged captive through the deep.
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour

Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs,
And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance-
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And, if with infirm hand Eternity,

Mother of many acts and hours, should free

The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to re-assume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!

NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, BY

MRS. SHELLEY.

His princi

On the 12th of March 1818 Shelley quitted England, never to return. pal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he