PART II.

"There was a power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace,

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.

"A lady, the wonder of her kind,

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind,
Which, dilating, had moulded her mein and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,

"Tended the garden from morn to even;

And the meteors of that sublunar heaven,

Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth, Laughed around her footsteps up from the earth.

"She had no companion of mortal race,

But her tremulous breath, and her flushing face
Told, while the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,
That her dreams were less slumber than paradise;

"As if some bright spirit, for her sweet sake,
Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake;
As if yet around her he lingering were,

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.

"Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest; You might hear by the heaving of her breast, That the coming and going of the wind

Brought pleasure there and left passion behind. "And wherever her airy footstep trod,

Her trailing hair from the grassy sod

Erased its light vestige with shadowy sweep,
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark-green deep.

"I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet,
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.
"She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam,

And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.

"She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.
"And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore in a basket of Indian woof
Into the rough woods far aloof,

"In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull,
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.

"And many an antenatal tomb,

Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging around the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

"This fairest creature from earliest spring,
Thus moved through the garden, ministering
All the sweet season of summer-tide,

And, ere the first leaf looked brown, she died!

PART III.

"Three days the flowers of the garden fair

Like the stars, when the moon is awakened, were,

Or the waves of Baiæ, ere luminous

She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

"And on the fourth the sensitive plant

Felt the sound of the funeral chant;

And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low.

“The dark grass, and the flowers amid the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.

"The garden once fair, became cold and foul,

Like the corpse of her who had once been its soul;
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.

PART II.

"There was a power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace,

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.

A lady, the wonder of her kind,

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind,
Which, dilating, had moulded her mein and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,

"Tended the garden from morn to even;

And the meteors of that sublunar heaven,

Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth, Laughed around her footsteps up from the earth. "She had no companion of mortal race,

But her tremulous breath, and her flushing face
Told, while the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,
That her dreams were less slumber than paradise;

"As if some bright spirit, for her sweet sake,
Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake;
As if yet around her he lingering were,

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.

"Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest; You might hear by the heaving of her breast, That the coming and going of the wind

Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.

"And wherever her airy footstep trod,
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige with shadowy sweep,
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark-green deep.

"I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet,
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;

I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.
"She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam,

And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.

"His breath was a chain, which, without a sound,
The earth, and the air, and the water, bound;
He came fiercely down in his chariot-throne;
By the ten-fold blasts of the Arctic zone.

"Then the weeds, which were forms of living death,
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath;
Their decay, and sudden flight from frost,
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost.
"And under the roots of the sensitive plant,
The moles and the dormice died for want;
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air,
And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
"When winter had gone and spring came back,
The sensitive plant was a leafless wreck;

But the mandrakes, and toad-stools, and docks and darnels,
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.'

In Pisa Shelley's best poems were written-The Cenci, Helas, The Witch of Atlas, Adonais, The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, and nearly all the shorter poems of which I have spoken. The last thing he ever wrote was The Triumph of Time, which was left unfinished, and was published by his wife in as perfect a shape as she could bring it from his scattered papers.

In the spring of 1822 Shelley left Pisa and took a house on the west coast of Italy, near the village of Lerici. He was very fond of the sea, and had ordered a yacht built, in which he and a warm friend, Capt. Williams, were going to spend many a day on the blue Italian waters, close at hand. On the sixteenth of May the yacht arrived. Shelley was as pleased with it as a boy with a long-wished for toy. They made several excursions in the boat, which was named Don Juan from Byron's poem, and finally came down to Leghorn in her. After a few days stay here, Shelley and Williams started back in the boat for the town of Spezzia, on the Gulf of Spezzia, not far from their home.

This was the last ever seen of them. A sudden sea-storm came shortly after they started, with a dense fog. The little

After

boat was probably run down by some larger vessel. several days of waiting-terrible days for Mrs. Shelley and Mrs. Williams-the bodies were found washed up, wavebeaten and almost fleshless, on the shore. What was left of the two bodies was burnt on a funeral pile built on the sandy shore, and their ashes were buried in the cemetery in Florence. Byron was foremost in this strange burial rite, aided by Capt. Trelawney,* who was a friend of both the dead.

Thus, in the real opening of life, at the point where what was best in him seemed ready for fruition, Shelley died. Men of much less genius have gained a larger fame and held a higher place in the annals of literature. But, as he is one of the most poetic of poets, he will always be loved by those of his own guild; his thought will take deep root in the hearts of other poets, and serve for their inspiration. For himself, he died too young. The promise of his life was thwarted by his early death. Up to the time of his death he had been restless and unsettled in spirit. The seething waves of thought in his brain should have had time to cool and settle into tranquillity. Dying at thirty, he had not reached the serene heights where the poet ought to dwell. If he had lived longer, I feel sure time would have ripened him into a grand maturity; would have taught him trust and patience, and brought him to a calm which in his brief life he had not not reached.

TALK LVI.

ON JOHN KEATS.

ONE of Shelley's most touching and beautiful poems is his Adonais-The Lament for Keats. I wish it were not too long for me to quote it all; I can only give you here a few verses:

*A very interesting sketch of Shelley and Byron-called Recollections of Shelley and Byron, has been published by Capt. Trelawney.