Involve in fire, which not the loosened fountain
Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds
Of evil, catch from our uniting minds

The spark which must consume them;-Cythna then Will have cast off the impotence that binds

Her childhood now, and thro' the paths of men Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent's den.

XLVII.

"We part-O Laon, I must dare nor tremble
To meet those looks no more!-Oh, heavy stroke,
Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble
The agony of this thought?"-As thus she spoke
The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke,
And in my arms she hid her beating breast.
I remained still for tears-sudden she woke
As one awakes from sleep, and wildly prest
My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possest.

XLVIII.

"We part to meet again—but yon blue waste, Yon desart wide and deep holds no recess, Within whose happy silence, thus embraced We might survive all ills in one caress: Nor doth the grave-I fear 'tis passionlessNor yon cold vacant Heaven :-we meet again Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain."

XLIX.

I could not speak, tho' she had ceased, for now
The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep,

Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow;

So we arose, and by the star-light steep
Went homeward-neither did we speak nor weep,
But pale, were calm1 with passion-thus subdued
Like evening shades that o'er the mountains creep,
We moved towards our home; where, in this mood,
Each from the other sought refuge in solitude.

1 Mrs. Shelley repunctuates this line thus:

But pale, were calm-With passion thus subdued,

and Mr. Rossetti follows her, adding

a comma after but. I cannot see any sufficient reason for disturbing the original text.

Canto Third.

I.

What thoughts had sway over my sister's1 slumber
That night, I know not; but my own did seem
As if they did2 ten thousand years outnumber
Of waking life, the visions of a dream,

Which hid in one dim gulph the troubled stream
Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,
Whose limits yet were never memory's theme:
And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds past,
Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.

II.

Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace
More time than might make grey the infant world,
Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space:
When the third came, like mist on breezes curled,
From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:

1 In The Revolt of Islam, this line reads thus

What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely slumber.

2 Might is substituted for did in The Revolt of Islam; but no such change is made in Shelley's revised

copy.

Methought, upon the threshold of a cave

I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled

With dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave, Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.

III.

We lived a day as we were wont to live,
But Nature had a robe of glory on,

And the bright air o'er every shape did weave
Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone,

The leafless bough among the leaves alone,
Had being clearer than its own could be,
And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shown
In this strange vision, so divine to me,
That if I loved before, now love was agony.

IV.

Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,
And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere
Of the calm moon-when, suddenly was blended
With our repose a nameless sense of fear;
And from the cave behind I seemed to hear

Sounds gathering upwards!-accents incomplete,
And stifled shrieks, and now, more near and near,
A tumult and a rush of thronging feet

The cavern's secret depths beneath the earth did beat.

V.

The scene was changed, and away, away, away!
Thro' the air and over the sea we sped,1

1 Having classed these two irregular lines among those miracles of telling irregularity so frequent in Shelley's maturer works, I was naturally shocked to find Mr. Rossetti had substituted

Thorough for Thro', with the apology that the line "limped in every previous edition"! To my thinking

both lines bound with marvellous appropriateness to the subject. Of

And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,

And the winds bore me-thro' the darkness spread
Around, the gaping earth then vomited

Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung
Upon my flight; and ever as we fled,

They plucked at Cythna-soon to me then clung
A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.

VI.

And I lay struggling in the impotence.

Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,
Tho', still deluded, strove the tortured sense

To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound
Which in the light of morn was poured around
Our dwelling-breathless, pale, and unaware

I rose, and all the cottage crowded found

With armed men, whose glittering swords were bare, And whose degraded limbs the tyrant's garb did wear.

VII.

And ere with rapid lips and gathered brow
I could demand the cause- -a feeble shriek-
It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,
Arrested me-my mien grew calm and meek,
And grasping a small knife, I went to seek
That voice among the crowd-'twas Cythna's cry!
Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak
Its whirlwind rage-so I past quietly

Till I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.

course Thro' must not be slurred, but pronounced with a special stress,

its one heavy syllable doing duty for

a whole foot.