A western Crescent, borne impetuously.
Then is made full the circle of her light,

And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright
Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then,
A wonder and a sign to mortal men.

The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power
Mingled in love and sleep-to whom she bore
Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare
Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are.

Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity,
Fair-haired and favourable! thus with thee
My song beginning, by its music sweet
Shall make immortal many a glorious feat
Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well

Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell.

HOMER'S HYMN TO THE SUN

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 2nd ed.; dated 1818.] OFFSPRING of Jove, Calliope, once more

To the bright Sun, thy hymn of music pour;
Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth
Euryphaëssa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth;
Euryphaessa, the famed sister fair

Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear

A race of loveliest children; the young Morn,
Whose arms are like twin roses newly born,
The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun,
Who borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run
Unconquerably, illuming the abodes
Of mortal Men and the eternal Gods.

Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes,
Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise
And are shot forth afar, clear beams of light;
His countenance, with radiant glory bright,
Beneath his graceful locks far shines around,
And the light vest with which his limbs are bound,
Of woof aethereal delicately twined,

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Glows in the stream of the uplifting wind.

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His rapid steeds soon bear him to the West;

Where their steep flight his hands divine arrest,
And the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he

Sends from bright Heaven beneath the shadowy sea.

HOMER'S HYMN TO THE EARTH: MOTHER OF ALL [Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 2nd ed.; dated 1818.] O UNIVERSAL Mother, who dost keep

From everlasting thy foundations deep,

Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!
All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea,

All things that fly, or on the ground divine

Live, move, and there are nourished-these are thine;
These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee
Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree
Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity!

The life of mortal men beneath thy sway

Is held; thy power both gives and takes away!
Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish;
All things unstinted round them grow and flourish.
For them, endures the life-sustaining field
Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield

Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled.
Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free,
The homes of lovely women, prosperously;
Their sons exult in youth's new budding gladness,
And their fresh daughters free from care or sadness,
With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song,
On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among,
Leap round them sporting-such delights by thee
Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity.

Mother of gods, thou Wife of starry Heaven,
Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given
A happy life for this brief melody,

Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.

HOMER'S HYMN TO MINERVA

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, P. W., 1839, 2nd ed.; dated 1818.]

I SING the glorious Power with azure eyes,

Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise,

Tritogenia, town-preserving Maid,

Revered and mighty; from his awful head

.5

ΤΟ

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Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour dressed, 5 Golden, all radiant! wonder strange possessed

The everlasting Gods that Shape to see,

Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously

Rush from the crest of Aegis-bearing Jove;

Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move

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Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed;

Earth dreadfully resounded, far and wide;

And, lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high

In purple billows, the tide suddenly

Stood still, and great Hyperion's son long time

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Checked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime, Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw

The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view.
Child of the Aegis-bearer, hail to thee,

Nor thine nor others' praise shall unremembered be.

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HOMER'S HYMN TO VENUS

[Published by Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862; dated 1818.]
[Vv. 1-55, with some omissions.]

MUSE, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
Who wakens with her smile the fulled delight
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings,
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,
Or earth, with her maternal ministry,
Nourish innumerable, thy delight
All seek O crowned Aphrodite!

Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:-
Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well
Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame
Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.
Diana

golden-shafted queen,

Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green
Of the wild woods, the bow, the.

And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit

Of beasts among waste mountains,-such delight
Is hers, and men who know and do the right.
Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,
Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,
Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;
But sternly she refused the ills of Love,
And by her mighty Father's head she swore
An oath not unperformed, that evermore
A virgin she would live mid deities
Divine: her father, for such gentle ties
Renounced, gave glorious gifts thus in his hall
She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all
In every fane, her honours first arise
From men-the eldest of Divinities.

These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,
But none beside escape, so well she weaves
Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods
Who live secure in their unseen abodes.
She won the soul of him whose fierce delight
Is thunder-first in glory and in might.
And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,
With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,
Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair,
Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.

but in return,

In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,
That by her own enchantments overtaken,
She might, no more from human union free,
Burn for a nursling of mortality.

For once, amid the assembled Deities,
The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes

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Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile,
And boasting said, that she, secure the while,
Could bring at will to the assembled Gods
The mortal tenants of earth's dark_abodes,
And mortal offspring from a deathless stem
She could produce in scorn and spite of them.
Therefore he poured desire into her breast
Of young Anchises,

Feeding his herds among the mossy fountains
Of the wide Ida's many-folded mountains,-
Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung
Like wasting fire her senses wild among.

THE CYCLOPS

A SATYRIC DRAMA

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EURIPIDES

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[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824; dated 1819. Amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian there is a copy, practically complete,' which has been collated by Mr. C. D. Locock. See Examination, &c., 1903, pp. 64-70. Though legible throughout, and comparatively free from corrections, it has the appearance of being a first draft' (Locock).]

Silenus. O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now
And ere these limbs were overworn with age,
Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled'st
The mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven afar

By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee;
Then in the battle of the sons of Earth,
When I stood foot by foot close to thy side,
No unpropitious fellow-combatant,

And, driving through his shield my winged spear,
Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now,

Is it a dream of which I speak to thee?

By Jove, it is not, for you have the trophies!
And now I suffer more than all before.
For when I heard that Juno had devised
A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea
With all my children quaint in search of you,
And I myself stood on the beaked prow
And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys
Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain
Made white with foam the green and purple sea,-
And so we sought you, king. We were sailing
Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose,

And drove us to this waste Aetnean rock;

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23 waste B.; wild 1824; cf. 26, where waste is cancelled for wild' (Locock).

The one-eyed children of the Ocean God,

The man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit,
On this wild shore, their solitary caves,

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And one of these, named Polypheme, has caught us
To be his slaves; and so, for all delight

Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody,

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We keep this lawless giant's wandering flocks.
My sons indeed, on far declivities,

Young things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep,
But I remain to fill the water-casks,

Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering

Some impious and abominable meal

To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it!
And now I must scrape up the littered floor
With this great iron rake, so to receive
My absent master and his evening sheep
In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see

My children tending the flocks hitherward.
Ha! what is this? are your Sicinnian measures
Even now the same, as when with dance and song
You brought young Bacchus to Althaea's halls?

Chorus of Satyrs.

STROPHE

Where has he of race divine

Wandered in the winding rocks?

Here the air is calm and fine

For the father of the flocks ;-
Here the grass is soft and sweet,
And the river-eddies meet
In the trough beside the cave,
Bright as in their fountain wave.--
Neither here, nor on the dew

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Of the lawny uplands feeding?

Oh, you come!-a stone at you

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Will I throw to mend your breeding ;

Get along, you horned thing,

Wild, seditious, rambling!