Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around; ; One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings Now float above thy darkness, and now rest III. Some say that gleams of a remoter world In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Its circles? for the very spirit fails, Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread And wind among the accumulated steeps; Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.-Is this the scene Where the old earthquake-demon taught her young Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea Of fire envelope once this silent snow? None can reply—all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be But for such faith with nature reconciled; Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good, Interpret or make felt, or deeply feel. IV. The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell 'Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain, Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep Holds every future leaf and flower, the bound With which from that detested trance they leap; The works and ways of man, their death and birth And that of him, and all that his may be ; All things that move and breathe with toil and sound Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell. Remote, serene, and inaccessible : And this, the naked countenance of earth, On which I gaze, even these primæval mountains, Slowly rolling on; there, many a precipice Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down From yon remotest waste, have overthrown And their place is not known. Below, vast caves Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam, V. Mont Blanc yet gleams on high :—the there, The still and solemn power of many sights Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea Silence and solitude were vacancy 7? SWITZERLAND, June 23, 1816. NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816. BY THE EDITOR. SHELLEY wrote little during this year. The poem entitled The Sunset" was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. "The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage, by reading the Nouvelle Héloise for the first time. The reading it on the very spot where the scenes are laid, added to the interest; and he was at once surprised and charined by the passionate eloquence and earnest enthralling interest that pervades this work. There was something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposition; and, though differing in many of the views, and shocked by others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful. "Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following mention of this poem in his publication of the History of Six Weeks' Tour, and Letters from Switzerland:-"The Poem entitled 'Mont Blanc,' is written by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which t attempts to describe; and as an undisciplined overflowing |