"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

by year

That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But
year
lived on; in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale

Woven by some subtlest bard to make hard hearts
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief.

Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan,
Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,

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

Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day, Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

"Inheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep, but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem,

22 sunrise? We will wake, Forman conj.

37 Hunt, 1823 || omit, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;

Oh, that, like thine, mine epitaph were - Peace!" This was the only moan she ever made.

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY

I

THE awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us, visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to
flower;

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

II

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate

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,

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. Published by Hunt, Examiner, January 19, 1817, and with Rosalind and Helen, 1819. Com posed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer.

i. 2 among, Shelley, 1819 || amongst, Shelley, 1817.

ii. 1 dost, Shelley, 1819 || doth, Shelley, 1817.

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not forever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown;

Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom; why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope.

III

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given;

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost and
Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavorFrail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail

to sever,

From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven,

Or music by the night wind sent

Through strings of some still instrument,

Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

IV

Love, Hope and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart, And come, for some uncertain moments lent. Man were immortal and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

ii. 9 fear and dream || care and pain, Boscombe MS.
iv. omit, Boscombe MS.

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes!

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame,

Depart not as thy shadow came!

Depart not, lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality!

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead; I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed.

I was not heard I saw them not

When, musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing

All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,-
Sudden thy shadow fell on me ;

Į shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

VI

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

now

iv. 8 art, Shelley, 1817 || are, Shelley, 1819.

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious nightThey 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.

VII

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth

Descended, to my onward life supply

Its calm, to one who worships thee,

And every form containing thee,

Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all humankind.

MONT BLANC

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

I

The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Mont Blanc. Published in the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, 1817. Composed in Switzerland, in July.