XXXVII

And ever as we sailed, our minds were full
Of love and wisdom, which would overflow
In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful;
And in quick smiles whose light would come
and go,

Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow
Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress;
For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,
That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less
Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.

XXXVIII

Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling

Number delightful hours for through the sky The sphered lamps of day and night, revealing New changes and new glories, rolled on high, Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair; On the fourth day, wild as a wind-wrought sea The stream became, and fast and faster bare The spirit-winged boat, steadily speeding there.

XXXIX

Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains

Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand foun

tains,

The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar

Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,

Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child
Securely fled that rapid stress before,

Amid the topmost spray and sunbows wild Wreathed in the silver mist; in joy and pride we smiled.

XL

The torrent of that wide and raging river
Is passed, and our aërial speed suspended.
We look behind; a golden mist did quiver
When its wild surges with the lake were
blended;

Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended
Between two heavens, that windless, waveless

lake,

Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended

By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,

And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.

XLI

Motionless resting on the lake awhile,

I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
Their peaks aloft; I saw each radiant isle;
And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear
The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound

Which issued thence drawn nearer and more near, Like the swift moon this glorious earth around, The charmed boat approached, and there its haven found.

xl. 4 When || Where, Rossetti.

5 on a, Rossetti || one, Shelley, 18181,2. xli. 5 one the, Forman conj.

NOTES

SHELLEY'S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB

I. 242, 243:

The sun's unclouded orb

Rolled through the black concave.

Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a rayless orb of fire in the midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere and their reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations propagated through a subtle medium or of numerous minute particles repelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly exceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted. Observations on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have demonstrated that light takes up no more than 8′ 7′′ in passing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 95,000,000 miles. Some idea may be gained of the immense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years would elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of them; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a distance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the earth.

I. 252, 253:

Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems rolled.

The plurality of worlds the indefinite immensity of the Universe is a most awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at the consequences of that necessity which is a syn