And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair As starbeams among twilight trees:Such lovely ministers to meet Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet. With mountain winds, and babbling springs, Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice Beams that were never meant for thine, To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope Of love, or moving thoughts to thee? Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles. Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted; The glory of the moon is dead; Night's ghost and dreams have now departed; This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and [mirth; And complicate strange webs of melancholy The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head, [thy feet: The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet. THE cold earth slept below, With a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow, The wintry hedge was black, On the bare thorn's breast, Thine eyes glowed in the glare As a fen-fire's beam On a sluggish stream Gleams dimly y-so the moon shone there, And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair, That shook in the wind of night. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved; The night did shed On thy dear head Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie November, 1815. TO WORDSWORTH. POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE. I HATED thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most ambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust, NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS. BY THE EDITOR. THE remainder of Shelley's Poems will be arranged in the order in which they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside, and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings, after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions, I can only guess, by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed together at the end of the volume. The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as early poems, the greater part were published with "Alastor;" some of them were written previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning, "Oh, there are spirits in the air," was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well. He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth. The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the churchyard of Lechdale, occurred during his voyage up the Thames, in the autumn of 1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near Windsor Forest, and his life was spent under its shades, or on the water; meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at extending his political doctrines; and attempted so to do by appeals, in prose essays, to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way for better things. In the scanty journals kept during those years, I find a record of the books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814 and 1815, the list is extensive. It includes in Greek; Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus-the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes Laertius. In Latin; Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero, a large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English; Milton's Poems, Wordsworth's Excursion, Southey's Madoc and Thalaba, Locke on the Human Understanding, Bacon's Novum Organum. In Italian, Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the Rêveries d'un Solitaire of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travels. He read few novels. POEMS WRITTEN IN THE SUNSET. THERE late was One, within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and death contended. None may know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath Fail, like the trances of the summer air, When, with the Lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walked along the pathway of a field, Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, And the old dandelion's hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown massy woods-and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead."Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, "I never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me." That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep-but when the morning came The lady found her lover dead and cold. Let none believe that God in mercy gave That stroke. The lady died not, nor wild, grew But year by year lived on-in truth I think Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief:— Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so pale; Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins And weak articulations might be seen abotra at HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. THE awful shadow of some unseen Power Like aught that for its grace may be With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Remain the records of their vain endeavour; Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, Through strings of some still instrument, Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. དད I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even I call the phantoms of a thousand hours [now Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned Of studious zeal or love's delight [bowers Outwatched with me the envious night: They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past: there is a harmony Thus let thy power, which like the truth MONT BLANC. LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. I. THE everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, II. Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep Ravine- Of lightning through the tempest:-thou dost lie, Children of elder time, in whose devotion, 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, IV. The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, All things that move and breathe with toil and sound And this, the naked countenance of earth, Slowly rolling on; there, many a precipice Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; V. Mont Blanc yet gleams on high-the power is 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 Héloïse 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 charmed 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. 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 it attempts to describe; and as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untameable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang." This was an eventful year, and less time was |