Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
More fleet than storms--the wide world shrinks below,
When winter and despondency are past.

FRAGMENT V

"TWAS at this season that Prince Athanase
Passed the white Alps-those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow;-beside the ways

The waterfalls were voiceless-for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
Or by the curdling winds-like brazen wings

260

265

Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow-
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung

And filled with frozen light the chasms below.

Vexed by the blast, the great pines groaned and swung
Under their load of [snow]-

270

Such as the eagle sees, when he dives down
From the gray deserts of wide air, [beheld]

275

[Prince] Athanase; and o'er his mien (?) was thrown

The shadow of that scene, field after field,
Purple and dim and wide

FRAGMENT VI

THOU art the wine whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,

Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew;--
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
Investeth it; and when the heavens are blue
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue
Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some light robe;-thou ever soarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air
In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest

280

285

290

262 mountains edd. 1824, 1839; crags Bodl. MS. 264 fountains edd. 1824, 1839; prings Bodl. MS. 269 chasms Bodl. MS.; chasm edd. 1824, 1839. 283 thine Bodl. MS.; thy edd. 1824, 1839. 285 Investeth Bodl. MS.; Investest edd. 1824, 1839. 89 light Bodl. MS.; bright edd. 1824, 1839.

That which from thee they should implore:-the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts

295

The strong have broken-yet where shall any seek

A garment whom thou clothest not? the darts
Of the keen winter storm, barbèd with frost,
Which, from the everlasting snow that parts

The Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost
In the wide waved interminable snow
Ungarmented,

300

ANOTHER FRAGment (a)

YES, often when the eyes are cold and dry,
And the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within

Tears bitterer than the blood of agony

305

Trembling in drops on the discoloured skin

Of those who love their kind and therefore perish
In ghastly torture-a sweet medicine

Of peace and sleep are tears, and quietly

Them soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall
But.

310

ANOTHER FRAGMENT (B)

HER hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon;

Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came
The light from them, as when tears of delight
Double the western planet's serene flame.

ROSALIND

AND

HELEN

A MODERN ECLOGUE

315

[Begun at Marlow, 1817 (summer); already in the press, March, 1818; finished at the Baths of Lucca, August, 1818; published with other poems, as the title-piece of a slender volume, by C. & J. Ollier, London, 1819 (spring). See Bibliographical List. Sources of the text are (1) editio princeps, 1819; (2) Poetical Works, ed. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, edd. 1st and 2nd. A fragment of the text is amongst the Boscombe MSS. The poem is reprinted here from the editio princeps; verbal alterations are recorded in the footnotes, punctual in the Editor's Notes at the end of this volume.]

ADVERTISEMENT

THE story of Rosalind and Helen | meditation; and if, by interesting the is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the affections and amusing the imagination, highest style of poetry. It is in no it awakens a certain ideal melancholy degree calculated to excite profound favourable to the reception of more

the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of in

important impressions, it will produce chre, of Petrarch. If any one is inin the reader all that the writer ex-clined to condemn the insertion of the perienced in the composition. I re- introductory lines, which image forth signed myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it. I do not know which of the few scat-tercourse only add to my apprehension tered poems I left in England will be selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One', which I sent from Italy, was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepul

of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.

NAPLES, Dec. 20, 1818.

ROSALIND, HELEN AND HER CHILD

Scene, the Shore of the Lake of Como

Helen. Come hither, my sweet | Those heathy paths, that inland

Rosalind.

5

'Tis long since thou and I have met;
And yet methinks it were unkind
Those moments to forget.
Come sit by me. I see thee stand
By this lone lake, in this far land,
Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
United, and thine eyes replying
To the hues of yon fair heaven. 10
Come, gentle friend: wilt sit by me?
And be as thou wert wont to be
Ere we were disunited?

None doth behold us now: the power
That led us forth at this lone hour 15
Will be but ill requited

If thou depart in scorn: oh! come,
And talk of our abandoned home.
Remember, this is Italy,

And we are exiles. Talk with me 20
Of that our land, whose wilds and
floods,

stream,

And the blue mountains, shapes which seem

25

Like wrecks of childhood's sunny

dream:

Which that we have abandoned now,

Weighs on the heart like that re

morse

Which altered friendship leaves. I
seek

No more our youthful intercourse. 30
That cannot be! Rosalind, speak.
Speak to me. Leave me not.—When
morn did come,

When evening fell upon our common
home,

When for one hour we parted,-do
not frown:

I would not chide thee, though thy
faith is broken :
But turn to me. Oh! by this cher-
ished token,
36

Barren and dark although they be,
Were dearer than these chestnut Of woven hair, which thou wilt not

woods:

disown,

1 'Lines written among the Euganean Hills.'-ED.

63 from there] from thee ed. 1819.

A priest saved to burn in the market130 place. Gloom, and the trance of Nature