And their lips moved; one seemed to speak, The dizzy flight of that phantom pale Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, And she arose, while from the veil Of her dark eyes the dream did creep; And she walked about as one who knew That sleep has sights as clear and true As any waking eyes can view. MARLOW, 1817. TO CONSTANTIA SINGING. THUS to be lost and thus to sink and die, Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour it And from thy touch like fire doth leap. [is yet, Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet, Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget! A breathless awe, like the swift change Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers, Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange, Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven By the enchantment of thy strain, And on my shoulders wings are woven, To follow its sublime career, Beyond the mighty moons that wane Upon the verge of nature's utmost sphere, Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear. Her voice is hovering o'er my soul—it lingers O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings, The blood and life within those snowy fingers Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. My brain is wild, my breath comes quickThe blood is listening in my frame, And thronging shadows, fast and thick, Fall on my overflowing eyes; My heart is quivering like a flame; As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee, Now 'tis the breath of summer night, Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight. I MET a traveller from an antique land LINES. THAT time is dead for ever, child, Drowned, frozen, dead for ever! We look on the past, And stare aghast NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817. BY THE EDITOR. THE very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had approached so near Shelley, appears to have kindled to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year. "Revolt of Islam," written and printed, was a great effort" Rosalind and Helen" was begun— and the fragments and poems I can trace to the same period, show how full of passion and reflection were his solitary hours. The In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book, and without implements of writing, I find many such in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, and desire to trace its workings. Thus in the same book that addresses "Constantia, Singing," I find these lines: My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing, Of rapture as a boat with swift sails winging And this apostrophe to Music: No, Music, thou art not the God of Love, Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self, Till it becomes all music murmurs of. In another fragment he calls it The silver key of the fountain of tears, Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child, And then again this melancholy trace of the sad thronging thoughts, which were the well whence he drew the idea of Athanase, and express the restless, passion-fraught emotions of one whose sensibility, kindled to too intense a life, perpetually preyed upon itself : To thirst and find no fill-to wail and wander In the next page I find a calmer sentiment, better fitted to sustain one whose whole being was love: Wealth and dominion fade into the mass In another book, which contains some passionate outbreaks with regard to the great injustice that he endured this year, the poet writes: My thoughts arise and fade in solitude, The verse that would invest them melts away He had this year also projected a poem on the subject of Otho, inspired by the pages of Tacitus. I find one or two stanzas only, which were to open the subject: OTHO. Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be, Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail, "Twill wrong thee not-thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel, In his own blood-a deed it was to buy I insert here also the fragment of a song, though I do not know the date when it was written,-but it was early : ΤΟ Yet look on me-take not thine eyes away, Which feed upon the love within mine own, Which is indeed but the reflected ray Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown. Yet speak to me-thy voice is as the tone Of my heart's echo, and I think I hear That thou yet lovest me; yet thou alone Like one before a mirror, without care Of aught but thine own features, imaged there; He projected also translating the Hymns of Homer; his version of several of the shorter ones remain, as well as that to Mercury, already published in the Posthumous Poems. His readings this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the Hymns of Homer and the Iliad, he read the Dramas of Eschylus and Sophocles, the Symposium of Plato, and Arrian's Historia Indica. In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In English, the Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of it aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings, I find also mentioned the Fairy Queen, and other modern works, the production of his contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and Byron. His life was now spent more in thought than action—he had lost the eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was far from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy, or politics, or taste, were the subjects of conversation. He was playful-and indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others--not in bitterness, but in sport. The Author of "Nightmare Abbey" seized on some points of his character and some habits of his life when he painted Scythrop. He was not addicted to "port or madeira," but in youth he had read of "Illuminati and Eleutherachs," and believed that he possessed the power of operating an immediate change in the minds of men and the state of society. These wild dreams had faded; sorrow and adversity had struck home; but he struggled with despondency as he did with physical pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats, and watching the navigation of his tiny craft with eagernessor repeating with wild energy the "Ancient Mariner," and Southey's "Old Woman of Berkeley," but those who do, will recollect that it was in such, and in the creations of his own fancy, when that was most daring and ideal, that he sheltered himself from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life. |