TO WORDSWORTH. POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE. I HATED thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS. 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. Of The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the poetry of his boyhood 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 BY THE EDITOR. 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 where with 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 MDCCCXVI. 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 grew wild, But year by 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 eye-lashes were torn 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 "Inheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, ob, not sleep! but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem, Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love; Oh, that like thine, miue epitaph were-Peace!" This was the only moan she ever made. HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. THE awful shadow of some unseen Power Like aught that for its grace may be 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, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate! Ask why the sunlight not for ever 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; No voice from some sublimer world hath ever Remain the records of their vain endeavour; Through strings of some still instrument, Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, Depart not as thy shadow came : Depart not, lest the grave should be, While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstacy! 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 'I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 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 In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, II. Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep Ravine The chainless winds still come and ever came Some say that gleams of a remoter world In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep IV. The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams And this, the naked countenance of earth, Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling V. Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:-the power is there, SWITZERLAND, June 23, 1816. NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816. BY THE EDITOR. The SHELLEY wrote little during this year. Poem entitled the "Sunset" was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at Bishops gate. 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 disposi tion; and, though differing in many of the views, and shocked by others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful. "Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following mention of this poem in his publication of the History of Six Weeks' Tour, and Letters from Switzerland : "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 given to study than usual. In the list of his reading I find, in Greck: Theocritus, the Prometheus of Eschylus, several of Plutarch's Lives and the works of Lucian. In Latin: Lucretius, Pliny's Letters, the Annals and Germany of Tacitus. In French the History of the French Revolution, by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne's Essays, and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful and instructive books in the world. The list i scanty in English works-Locke's Essay, Political Justice, and Coleridge's Lay Sermon, form nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud to me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New Testament, Paradise Lost, Spenser's Fairy Queen, an Don Quixote. , POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVII PRINCE ATHANASE. A FRAGMENT. PART I. THERE was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, Had grown quite weak and grey before his time; Nor any could the restless griefs unravel Which burned within him, withering up his prime And goading him, like fiends, from land to land. For nought of ill his heart could understand, Had left within his soul the dark unrest : For none than he a purer heart could have, What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown, He had a gentle yet aspiring mind; In others' joy, when all their own is dead: He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief, And yet, unlike all others, it is said That from such toil he never found relief. Although a child of fortune and of power, Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.— Those false opinions which the harsh rich use To blind the world they famish for their pride; Nor did he hold from any man his dues, But, like a steward in honest dealings tried, Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise, Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart, If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell; To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere He knew not. Though his life day after day, Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods; Were driven within him by some secret power, O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends A mirror found, he knew not-none could know; But on whoe'er might question him he turned The light of his frank eyes, as if to show |