The shadow of the peace denied to them. Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall, Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe Beyond the region of dissolving rains, Up the cold mountain she was wont to call Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould, Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led. She died among her kindred, being old. And know, that if love die not in the dead As in the living, none of mortal kind Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind. 1295 1300 1305 1310 1315 LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS, OCTOBER, 1818. MANY a green isle needs must be Day and night, and night and day, And sinks down, down, like that sleep Weltering through eternity; And the dim low line before 5 10 15 Of a dark and distant shore 20 Still recedes, as ever still But no power to seek or shun, He is ever drifted on To the haven of the grave. What, if there no friends will greet; In friendship's smile, in love's caress? That from bitter words did swerve others by his substituted reading.. Shelley has indulged in a loose and obsolete construction which may or may not be defensible; I should not at the present day permit it to myself, or condone it in another; and had the editor been engaged in the revision of a schoolboy's theme, he would certainly have done right to correct such a phrase, and as certainly would not have done wrong to add such further correction as he might deem desirable; but the task here undertaken is not exactly comparable to the revision of a schoolboy's theme." On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, O'er the billows of the gale; 45 50 55 Who once clothed with life and thought 65 Aye, many flowering islands lie To such a one this morn was led, My bark by soft winds piloted : I stood listening to the pean, With which the legioned rooks did hail 70 Gathering round with wings all hoar, Like grey shades, till the1 eastern heaven 1 In Shelley's edition, the is contracted into th', to bring the line with 75 in someone's idea of regularity; but Mrs. Shelley restores the. I say “re Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie Starred with drops of golden rain, 80 On the morning's fitful gale And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow down the dark steep streaming, Beneath is spread like a green sea Which her hoary sire now paves stores," because I cannot suppose for of Shelley's favourite item of punctuation (the pause), I suspect it was Peacock, who, I am told by a friend of his, cut out quantities of Shelley's pauses when revising for press. 1 In Shelley's edition, chrystalline. |