With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment's good
After long pain -with all your love,
This you never told me of.”
!
Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sand-hills of the sea;
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new:
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one,
In the universal sun.
43 your,
44 moment's, Trelawny MS. || moment, Mrs. Shelley, 18392.
50 And, Trelawny MS. || To, Mrs. Shelley, 18392.
53 dun, Trelawny MS. || dim, Mrs. Shelley, 18392.
I
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise !
Up, to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.
II
We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.
III
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
i. 6 fled, Mrs. Shelley, 1824 || dead, Trelawny MS., Mrs. Shelley, 18392.
ii. 2 Ocean, Mrs. Shelley, 18392.
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,
And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the treetops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.
IV
How calm it was! - the silence there
By such a chain was bound
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed, from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain waste
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,
A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life,-
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife;
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there
Was one fair form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
iv. 4 with, Rossetti.
10 white, Trelawny MS. || wide, Mrs. Shelley, 18392.
V
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,
Each seemed as 'twere a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light,
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day,-
In which the lovely forests grew,
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighboring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen,
Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast, Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth expressed; Until an envious wind crept by, Like an unwelcome thought,
v. 13 and the, Rossetti.
Which from the mind's too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind,
Than calm in waters seen.
WITH A GUITAR: TO JANE
ARIEL to Miranda :- Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain.
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
v. 34 The || And, Rossetti.
35 Shelley's ||
36 waters, Mrs. Shelley, 18392 || water, Trelawny MS.
With a Guitar: to Jane. Trelawny MS. || 43-90 With a Guitar. Athenæum, October 20, 1832; 1-42 To A. B. with a Guitar. Fraser's, January, 1833; To a Lady with a Guitar, Mrs. Shelley, 18392. Published by Medwin, as above, 1832-33.
12 of love that never, Fraser, 1833.
――――
-, Trelawny MS., S's, Mrs. Shelley, 18392.
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