blood thou sawest flow upon Golgotha. Whose mercy is extended even to thee!"

MY DEAR SIR,

ROUGH DRAFT OF A POEM.

LONDON, May 30, 1834.

I did not inquire, but, as you did not show it to me, I presume you do not possess in your inestimable collection the autograph of poor Shelley. I now send you a poem, or rather a rough draft of part of a poem, by his hand, and from his head and heart. The papers amongst which it was found, and other circumstances, lead me to believe that it was written in 1810, when the young poet was but seventeen or eighteen years old. It is doubtless unpublished, and of a more early date than any of his published poems; on all accounts, therefore, it is most interesting. I selected it for you soon after my return, but I mislaid it, and when I wrote to you the other day I could not find it. With kind regards to Mrs. Turner,

I am, &c.,

T. J. HOGG.

Dawson Turner, Esq.,
Yarmouth.

DEATH.,

For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,
I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,
Where Innocence sleeps 'neath the peace-giving sod,
And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny's nod ;
I offer a calm habitation to thee,

Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?
My mansion is damp, cold silence is there,

But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of despair,

Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath,

Dares dispute with grim silence the empire of Death.
I offer a calm habitation to thee,

Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?

MORTAL.

Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose,

It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes,

It longs in thy cells to deposit its load,

Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad;

Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away,
And Bigotry's bloodhounds lose scent of their prey;
Yet tell me, dark Death, when thine empire is o'er,
What awaits on Futurity's mist-covered shore?

DEATH.

Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil
The shadows that float on Eternity's vale;

Nought waits for the good, but a spirit of Love,
That will hail their blest advent to regions above.
For Love, Mortal, gleams thro' the gloom of my sway,
And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.
Hast thou loved?-Then depart from these regions of hate,
And in slumber with me blunt the arrows of fate.

I offer a calm habitation to thee,

Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?

MORTAL.

Oh! sweet is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ray
Which after thy night introduces the day;
How concealed, how persuasive, self-interest's breath,
Tho' it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death.

I hoped that I quite was forgotten by all,

Yet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall,

And duty forbids, tho' I languish to die,

When departure might heave virtue's breast with a sigh.

Oh, Death! oh, my friend! snatch this form to thy shrine,

And I fear, dear destroyer, I shall not repine.

The following unfinished verses were written at Oxford; they have never been published.

Death! where is thy victory?
To triumph whilst I die,
To triumph whilst thine ebon wing
Infolds my shuddering soul.
Oh, Death! where is thy sting?

Not when the tides of murder roll,

When nations groan, that kings may bask in bliss.

Death! canst thou boast a victory such as this?
When in his hour of pomp and power

His blow the mightiest murders gave,

'Mid nature's cries the sacrifice

Of millions to glut the grave;

When sunk the tyrant desolation's slave;

Or Freedom's life-blood streamed upon thy shrine;

Stern tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine?

To know in dissolution's void,

That mortals baubles sunk decay,
That everything, but Love, destroyed

Must perish with its kindred clay.

Perish Ambition's crown,

Perish her sceptered sway;

From Death's pale front fades Pride's fastidious frown.

In Death's damp vault the lurid fires decay,

That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue's beam

That all the cares subside,

Which lurk beneath the tide

Of life's unquiet stream.

Yes! this is victory!

And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky,
To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled;
To baffle the lean passions of their prey,

To sleep within the palace of the dead!
Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne
His countless courtiers mock the words they say,
Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown,

As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring groan !

Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe,
Which props the column of unnatural state,
You the plainings faint and low,

From misery's tortured soul that flow,
Shall usher to your fate.

Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell command
The war-fiend riots o'er a peaceful land.

You desolation's gory throng
Shall bear from Victory along
To that mysterious strand.

A POEM BY SHELLEY'S SISTER.

Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow.
Stern are the seas, when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad the grave where a loved one lies low.
But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,

More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee, More sad are the tears when these sorrows have moved thee, Which mixed with groans, anguish, and wild madness flow.

And, ah! poor Louisa has felt all this horror;

Full long the fallen victim contended with fate, Till a destitute outcast, abandoned to sorrow, She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate.

Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,

He turned callous aside from her moan and her prayer,-
She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
Crossed the dark mountain's side, tho' the hour it was late.

'Twas on the dark summit of huge Penmanmauer

That the form of the wasted Louisa reclined;

She shrieked to the ravens that croaked from afar,

And she sighed to the gusts of the wild-sweeping wind.
"I call not yon clouds, where the thunder-peals rattle,
I call not yon rocks, where the elements battle,

But thee, perjured Henry, I call thee unkind!"

Then she wreathed in her hair the wild flowers of the mountain,
And, deliriously laughing, a garland entwined,

She bedewed it with tears, then she hung o'er the fountain,
And, laving it, cast it a prey to the wind.

Ah, go!" she exclaimed, "where the tempest is yelling;
'Tis unkind to be cast on the sea that is swelling;

But I left, a pitiless outcast, my dwelling;

My garments are torn-so, they say, is my mind."

Not long lived Louisa-but over her grave

Waved the desolate form of a storm-blasted yew,
Around it no demons or ghosts dare to rave,

But spirits of Peace steep her slumbers in dew.

Then stay thy swift steps 'mid the dark mountain heather
Tho' chill blow the wind and severe be the weather,

For Perfidy, traveller, cannot bereave her

Of the tears to the tombs of the innocent due!

Oh! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain,
And sweet the mild rush of the soft-sighing breeze,
And sweet is the glimpse of yon dimly-seen mountain
'Neath the verdant arcades of yon shadowy trees;
But sweeter than all-

And ah! she may envy the heart-shocked quarry,
Who bids to the scenery of childhood farewell,
She may envy the bosom all bleeding and gory,

She may envy the sound of the drear passing knell.
Not so deep are his woes on his death-couch reposing
When on the last vision his dim eyes are closing,
As the outcast-

Those notes were so sad and so soft, that, ah! never
May the sound cease to vibrate on memory's ear!

Bysshe wrote down these verses for me at Oxford from memory. I was to have a complete and more correct copy of

them some day. They were the composition of his sister Elizabeth, and he valued them highly as well as their author, with whom, except an occasional tiff, when she preferred less dry and abstruse matters to his ethical and metaphysical speculations, he agreed most affectionately, cordially, and perfectly. I was to undertake to fall in love with her; if I did not I had no business to go to Field Place, and he would never forgive me. I promised to do my best; and, probably, it would not have been difficult to have kept my promise, at least, in a poetical sense. For any one whose age, fortune, and inclinations disposed him to settle in life, it might have been very easy to fall in love in a more earnest and practical manner, for she was one of those young ladies who win golden opinions from all their acquaintance.

66

I often found Shelley reading "Gebir." There was something in that poem which caught his fancy. He would read it aloud, or to himself sometimes, with a tiresome pertinacity. One morning, I went to his rooms to tell him something of importance, but he would attend to nothing but Gebir." With a young impatience, I snatched the book out of the obstinate fellow's hand, and threw it through the open window into the quadrangle. It fell upon the grass-plat, and was brought back presently by the servant. I related this incident, some years afterwards, and after the death of my poor friend, at Florence to the highly gifted author. He heard it with his hearty, cordial, genial laugh. "Well, you must allow it is something to have produced what could please one fellow creature and offend another so much."

SHELLEY AS A LATINIST.

He composed Latin verses with singular facility. On visiting him soon after his arrival at the accustomed hour of one, he was writing the usual exercise which we presented, I believe, once a week--a Latin translation of a paper in the Spectator. He soon finished it, and as he held it before the fire to dry, I offered to take it from him; he said it was not worth looking at; but as I persisted, through a certain scholastic curiosity to