Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
Then comes a range of mathematical
Instruments, for plans nautical and statical;
A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass
With ink in it; a china cup that was
What it will never be again, I think,

A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
The liquor doctors rail at- and which I
Will quaff in spite of them - and when we die
We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea,
And cry out, "heads or tails?" where'er we be.
Near that a dusty paint box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace from Saunderson and Sims,
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray

Of figures, disentangle them who may.

Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near those a most inexplicable thing,
With lead in the middle — I'm conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.

And here like some weird Archimage sit I, Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,

84 queer, Boscombe MS. || green, Mrs. Shelley, transcript, 1824. 92 odd hooks, Mrs. Shelley transcript || old hooks, Mrs. Shelley, 1824, old books, Mrs. Shelley, 18391.

100 those Mrs. Shelley, transcript || them, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

101 lead, Boscombe MS. || least, Mrs. Shelley, transcript, 1824.

The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews

Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;

I sit and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them; Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound

I heed him more than them; the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean; and the vines
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines.
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast; the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain,
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world; while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion jays,
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?

You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees In vacant chairs your absent images,

And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not. I demand if ever we

Shall meet as then we met; and she replies,
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;

127 eye, Boscombe MS., Mrs. Shelley, transcript, 18391 || age, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

"I know the past alone but summon home

My sister Hope, — she speaks of all to come.”
But I, an old diviner, who knew well
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o'er and o'er

Of our communion - how on the seashore
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;

How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek; and how we often made
Feasts for each other, where good-will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be; and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
Of this familiar life which seems to be
But is not or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe - and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world; and then anatomize
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years; or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are,

140 knew, Boscombe MS. || know, Mrs. Shelley, transcript, 1824. 144 citing, Boscombe MS, || acting, Mrs. Shelley, transcript, 1824. 151 Feasts, Mrs. Shelley, transcript || Treats, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. 153 well it, Mrs. Shelley, transcript | it well, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. 158 believe, and, Mrs. Shelley, transcript || believe; or, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

164 Mrs. Shelley, transcript, 1824 || no longer as we are, Forman conj.

Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; - or how
You listened to some interrupted flow

Of visionary rhyme, in joy and pain

Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps ; or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears,-
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed.
Or how I, wisest lady! then indued

The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,

And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,

66

My name is Legion!"-that majestic tongue Which Calderon over the desert flung

Of ages and of nations, and which found
An echo in our hearts,

and with the sound

Startled oblivion ; thou wert then to me
As is a nurse when inarticulately

A child would talk as its grown parents do.

If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,

If hawks chase doves through the ethereal way, Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey, Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast Out of the forest of the pathless past

These recollected pleasures?

You are now

In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow

173 their, Mrs. Shelley, transcript || the, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. 188 ethereal, Mrs. Shelley, transcript || aërial, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see That which was Godwin, greater none than he

Though fallen and fallen on evil times-to stand Among the spirits of our age and land,

Before the dread tribunal of to come

The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.

You will see Coleridge - he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure

Intense irradiation of a mind,

Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
Flags wearily through darkness and despair
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,

A hooded eagle among blinking owls.

Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it is

a tomb; Who is what others seem; his room no doubt Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung, — The gifts of the most learned among some dozens

197-201 Boscombe MS., Mrs. Shelley, transcript || omit, Mrs. Shelley, 1824, 18391.

Your old friend Godwin, greater none than he;
Though fallen on evil times, yet will he stand,

Among the spirits of our age and land,

Before the dread tribunal of To-come

The foremost, whilst rebuke stands pale and dumb.

Mrs. Shelley, 18392.

205 lightning, Boscombe MS., Mrs. Shelley, transcript || lustre,

Mrs. Shelley, 1824.