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Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first; but I cannot bring myself to keep back any thing he ever wrote, for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race; and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck bright truth

"from the pale-faced moon;

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned"

truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word, than from the waters of Lethe, which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woes. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination, which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like every thing he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the Borrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.

EARLY POEMS.

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD,
LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
And pallid evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of

day.

Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men,
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

They breathe their spells toward the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea; Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,

Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

Thou too, aërial pile, whose pinnacles

Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,

Around whose lessening and invisible height

Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres;

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,

Breathed from their wormy beds all living

things around;

And mingling with the still night and mute sky Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night:

Here could I hope, like some inquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

MUTABILITY.

WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep; We rise-one wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!-for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

ON DEATH.

There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.-ECCLESIASTES.

THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,

Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul

Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way; And the billows of cloud that around thee roll

Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny.

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This world is the nurse of all we knew,

This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see

All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?

Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? Who painteth the shadows that are beneath

The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb? Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be

With the fears and the love for that which we see?

TO ****

ΔΑΚΡΥΣΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΠΟΤΜΟΝ ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ.

O, THERE are spirits in the air,

And genii of the evening breeze,

And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

As star-beams ameng twilight trees:—

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