Imatges de pàgina
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The shadow of the peace denied to them.
And Rosalind, for when the living stem

Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,

Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe
The pale survivors followed her remains

Beyond the region of dissolving rains,

Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,

Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
The last, when it had sunk; and thro' the night
The charioteers of Arctos wheelèd round
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,
Whose sad inhabitants each year would come,
With willing steps climbing that rugged height,
And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound
With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite,
Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light:
Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom
Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb.

Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,

Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led.
Into the peace of his dominion cold:

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.

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LINES

WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS,

OCTOBER, 1818.

MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on

Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track;
Whilst above the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o'er-brimming deep;

And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be

Weltering through eternity;

And the dim low line before

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Of a dark and distant shore

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Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will,

But no power to seek or shun,

He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave

To the haven of the grave.

What, if there no friends will greet;
What, if there no heart will meet
His with love's impatient beat;
Wander wheresoe'er he may,
Can he dream before that day
To find refuge from distress

In friendship's smile, in love's caress?
Then 'twill wreak him little woe
Whether such there be or no:
Senseless is the breast, and cold,
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve

That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortured lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now1
Frozen upon December's bough.

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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,
Where a few grey rushes stand,
Boundaries of the sea and land:
Nor is heard one voice of wail
But the sea-mews, as they sail

O'er the billows of the gale;
Or the whirlwind up and down
Howling, like a slaughtered town,
When a king in glory rides
Through the pomp of fratricides:

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Who once clothed with life and thought
What now moves nor murmurs not.

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Aye, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide Agony :

To such a one this morn was led,

My bark by soft winds piloted :
'Mid the mountains Euganean

I stood listening to the pean,

With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun's uprise majestical;

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Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Thro' the dewy mist they soar

Like grey shades, till the1 eastern heaven

1 In Shelley's edition, the is contracted into th', to bring the line with

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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
In the unfathomable sky,
So their plumes of purple grain,

Starred with drops of golden rain,
Gleam above the sunlight woods,
As in silent multitudes

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On the morning's fitful gale
Thro' the broken mist they sail,

And the vapours cloven and gleaming

Follow down the dark steep streaming,
Till all is bright, and clear, and still,
Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,

Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline1;
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright,
Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

stores," because I cannot suppose for
a moment that the contraction was
Shelley's, the line being quite in his
manner without it. I do not know
who saw the volume through the
press; but, from the general scarcity

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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.

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