would be torn from us. He did not trollable emotions of his heart. I ought hesitate to resolve, if such were me- to observe that the fourth verse of this naced, to abandon country, fortune, effusion is introduced in Rosalind and everything, and to escape with his child; Helen. When afterwards this child and I find some unfinished stanzas ad- died at Rome, he wrote, à propos of the dressed to this son, whom afterwards English burying-ground in that city: we lost at Rome, written under the idea This spot is the repository of a sacred that we might suddenly be forced to loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's cross the sea, so to preserve him. This heart are now prophetic; he is rendered poem, as well as the one previously immortal by love, as his memory is by quoted, were not written to exhibit the death. My beloved child lies buried pangs of distress to the public; they here. I envy death the body far less were the spontaneous outbursts of a than the oppressors the minds of those man who brooded over his wrongs and whom they have torn from me. The woes, and was impelled to shed the one can only kill the body, the other grace of his genius over the uncon- crushes the affections.' POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818 TO THE NILE ['Found by Mr. Townshend Meyer among the papers of Leigh Hunt, [and] published in the St. James's Magazine for March, 1876. (Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B.; P. W. of P. B. S., Library Edition, 1876, vol. iii, p. 410.) First included among Shelley's poetical works in Mr. Forman's Library Edition, where a facsimile of the MS. is given. Composed February 4, 1818. See Complete Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Glasgow, 1901, vol. iv, p. 76.] MONTH after month the gathered rains descend And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend 5 Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells By Nile's aëreal urn, with rapid spells Urging those waters to their mighty end. O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level And they are thine, O Nile-and well thou knowest That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest. PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES [Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a copy amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment.] LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine, It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, Heard in its raging ebb and flow Which between the earth and sky doth lay; And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm, THE PAST [Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.] I WILT thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Heaping over their corpses cold Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould? II Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, TO MARY [Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.] O MARY dear, that you were here sky 5 Of this azure Italy. Mary dear, come to me soon, O Mary dear, that you were here; 15 ON A FADED VIOLET [Published by Hunt, Literary Pocket-Book, 1821. Reprinted by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Again reprinted, with several variants, P. W., 1839, 1st ed. Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1821. A transcript is extant in a letter from Shelley to Sophia Stacey, dated March 7, 1820.] I THE odour from the flower is gone Which like thy kisses breathed on me; On a Faded Violet-1 odour] colour 1839. 2 kisses breathed] sweet eyes smiled 1839. 3 colour] odour 1839. 4 glowed] breathed 1839. [Composed at Este, October, 1818. Published with Rosalind and Helen, 1819. Amongst the late Mr. Fredk. Locker-Lampson's collections at Rowfant there is a MS. of the lines (167–205) on Byron, interpolated after the completion of the poem.] 30 Wander wheresoe'er he may, 14 MANY a green isle needs must be 20 25 That from bitter words did swerve 35 40 8 cold and silent all edd. ; its cold, silent Stacey MS. shrivelled] withered 1839. 54 seamews 1819; seamew's Rossetti. 115 120 Sun-girt City, thou hast been oar 131 115 Sun-girt] Sea-girt cj. Palgrave. 150 190 Scarce can for this fame repay Sepulchres, where human forms, In the waste of years and hours, As the love from Petrarch's urn, 200 heart Seems to level plain and height; 215 220 By the skirts of that gray cloud 225 165 From your dust new 1819; From thy dust shall Rowfant MS. (heading of ll.167– 205). 175 songs 1819; sons cj. Forman. |