This true fair world of things, a sea A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, reflecting love; Which over all his kind as the sun's heaven Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, Darting from starry depths radiance and Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left, Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured; Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm, Forcing life's wildest shores to own its All things confess his strength. Of marble and of colour his dreams Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear; Language is a perpetual orphic song, Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng Unconscious, and its mother fears Of thoughts and forms, which else sense 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, less and shapeless were. The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, And selfish cares, its trembling And crystalline, till it becomes a winged satellites, mist, Like the polar Paradise, In the weird Cadmæn forest. Until its hue grows like what it beholds, Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, Upon its snow. The Earth. That it should be so. Oh, 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; Oh, 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. 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, NOTE TO PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 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 dead endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings. 2 be improved by a milder climate; he "My health has been materially worse. state of unnatural and keen excitement that, only to instance the organ of sight, Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endur- boughs of distant trees present themselves ance, 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 reassume To suffer woes which Hope thinks in finite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omni potent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; to me with microscopic distinctness. Neither to change, nor falter, nor my own sake--I feel I am capable of trampling on all such weakness; but for In almost every respect his journey to Italy was advantageous. He left behind friends to whom he was attached; but cares of a thousand kinds, many springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his native country, and, except the society of one or two friends, he had no compensation. The climate caused him to consume half his existence in helpless suffering. His dearest pleasure, the free enjoyment of the scenes of Nature, was marred by the same circumstance. He went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, and did not make any pause till he arrived at Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of Nature and Art in that divine land. The The The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas, One was the story of Tasso; of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The other was one founded on the Book of Job, which he never abandoned in idea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. third was the Prometheus Unbound. Greek tragedians were now his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Æschylus filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and demi-gods such fascinated the abstract imagination of Shelley. We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that interval Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we returned early in March 1819. During all this time Shelley meditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di Lucca he translated Plato's Symposium. But, though he diversified his studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a bright and beautiful Spring, he gave up his whole time to the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he mentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a letter, with that poetry and delicacy and truth of description which render his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and interest. At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition. The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human species was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity: God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall, "Brought death into the world and all our woe." Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionised as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all-even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph, emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a more idealised image of the same subject. He followed certain classical authorities, in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the |