All those who love and who e'er loved like
thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The ardors of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture.
He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above;
But thou art Love itself ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit; such emotion
Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May
Had not brought forth this morn, your wedding
day.
"Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,
Ye faint-eyed children of the Hours,"
Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers
Which she had from the breathing -
A table near of polished porphyry.
They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye
That looked on them, a fragrance from the touch
Whose warmth
checked their life; a light
such
As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love,
which did reprove
The childish pity that she felt for them,
And a
remorse that from their stem
She had divided such fair shapes
A feeling in the
made
which was a shade
Of gentle beauty on the flowers; there lay
20 e'er, Garnett || ever, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.
25 sea, Garnett || sense, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.
All gems that make the earth's dark bosom
gay.
rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,
And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes
The livery of unremembered snow-
Violets whose eyes have drunk
Fiordispina and her nurse are now
Upon the steps of the high portico;
Under the withered arm of Media
She flings her glowing arm
step by step and stair by stair, That withered woman, gray and white and brown
More like a trunk by lichens overgrown
Than anything which once could have been hu
man.
And ever as she goes the palsied woman
"How slow and painfully you seem to walk, Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk." "And well it may,
Fiordispina, dearest-well-a-day!
You are hastening to a marriage-bed;
I to the grave!
99
dead,
Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie
Beside him in my shroud as willingly
As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought."
"Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought
Not be remembered till it snows in June;
Such fancies are a music out of tune
With the sweet dance your heart must keep to
night.
What would you take all beauty and delight
Back to the Paradise from which you sprung,
And leave to grosser mortals?
And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet
And subtle mystery by which spirits meet?
Who knows whether the loving game is played,
When, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,
The naked soul goes wandering here and there
Through the wide deserts of Elysian air?
The violet dies not till it"
THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE
AT the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapped in sweet wild melodies-
Like an exhalation wreathing
To the sound of air low-breathing
Through Eolian pines, which make
A shade and shelter to the lake
Whence it rises soft and slow;
Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow
In the harmony divine
Of an ever-lengthening line
Which enwrapped her perfect form
With a beauty clear and warm.
The Birth of Pleasure. Forman || no title, Garnett. Published by Garnett, 1862, and dated, 1819.
LOVE, HOPE, DESIRE, AND FEAR
AND many there were hurt by that strong boy;
His name, they said, was Pleasure.
And near him stood, glorious beyond measure,
Four Ladies who possess all empery
In earth and air and sea;
Nothing that lives from their award is free.
Their names will I declare to thee,
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear;
And they the regents are
Of the four elements that frame the heart,
And each diversely exercised her art
By force or circumstance or sleight
To prove her dreadful might
Upon that poor domain.
Desire presented her [false] glass, and then
The spirit dwelling there
Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair
Within that magic mirror;
And, dazed by that bright error,
It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger,
And death, and penitence, and danger,
Had not then silent Fear
Touched with her palsying spear,—
So that, as if a frozen torrent,
The blood was curdled in its current;
It dared not speak, even in look or motion,
But chained within itself its proud devotion.
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear. Published by Garnett, 1862, and dated, 1821.
Between Desire and Fear thou wert
A wretched thing, poor Heart!
Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast, Wild bird for that weak nest.
Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought,
And from the very wound of tender thought
Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes
Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies,
Surmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow.
Then Hope approached, she who can borrow
For poor to-day from rich to-morrow;
And Fear withdrew, as night when day
Descends upon the orient ray;
And after long and vain endurance
The
poor heart woke to her assurance.
At one birth these four were born
With the world's forgotten morn,
And from Pleasure still they hold
All it circles, as of old.
When, as summer lures the swallow,
Pleasure lures the heart to follow
O weak heart of little wit-
The fair hand that wounded it,
Seeking, like a panting hare,
Refuge in the lynx's lair,
Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear,
Ever will be near.
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