THE SUNSET.1 THERE late was One within whose subtle being, That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep-but when the morning came 1 Mrs. Shelley says this poem was written in the Spring of the year 1816, while Shelley was residing at Bishopgate, near Windsor Forest. It first occurs in the Posthumous Poems. 2 So in the collected editions; but youth in the Posthumous Poems. 3 Although I cannot venture to interfere with the text without authority, I feel sure this line is very much cor The lady found her lover dead and cold. Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts Her eyelashes were worn away with tears, Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so pale; Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self Inheritor of more than earth can give, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest, rupted, and that we should read I never saw the sun-rise? We will wake here... As the passage stands the youth's statement and proposal both seem preposterous,-one by reason of improbability, the other by reason of tameness as leading up to the violent close. That two young people should take it into their heads to sleep out of doors to see the sun-rise would be an idea likely to commend itself to 40 45 50 Shelley; and that he within whose being "genius and death contended " should die in the cold night air is eminently probable. 1 In the Posthumous Poems, worn; but in the first edition of 1839 and onwards, torn,-certainly a misprint, but followed by Mr. Rossetti. There is a comma at Passionless in the Posthumous Poems; but not in later editions. FRAGMENT ON HOME.1 DEAR home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys, FRAGMENT OF A GHOST-STORY.2 A SHOVEL of his ashes took But Helen clung to her brother's arm, 1 From Relics of Shelley (p. 74). "Remarkable," says Mr. Garnett, in assigning the lines to the year 1816, as the only passage in which Shelley alludes to his home." 2 This is also from the Relics, where it appears with the date 1816, and the note, "Apparently a fragment of a ghost-story. Shelley was partial to the name of 'Helen,' as that of his favourite sister. Henry' is the name of Ianthe's lover in 'Queen Mab." The lines strike me as being very much like a relic of the pieces said to be of a similar character to Peter Bell the Third, sent to Hunt for Mr. Ollier to publish, and referred to in the letter quoted at P. 178 of this volume. [It will be remembered that, to this eventful year 1817 belong Laon and Cythna and a portion of Rosalind and Helen, and that, during the same period, Shelley was occupied with his Chancery case, and with the two prose pamphlets published under the pseudonym of The Hermit of Marlow," namely A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote throughout the United Kingdom, and An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte (usually, and incorrectly, designated We Pity the Plumage, but Forget the Dying Bird,-which words are an epigraph, not a title); so that it was altogether a year of great productiveness.-H. B. F.] |