Above, below, around,

The circling systems formed

A wilderness of harmony,

Each with undeviating aim

In eloquent silence through the depths of space
Pursued its wondrous way.—

Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.

Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,
Strange things within their belted orbs appear.
Like animated frenzies, dimly moved
Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,
Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead
Sculpturing records for each memory

In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,
Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell
Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world:
And they did build vast trophies, instruments
Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,

Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls
With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,
Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained
With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,
The sanguine codes of venerable crime.
The likeness of a throned king came by,
When these had past, bearing upon his brow
A threefold crown; his countenance was calm,
His eye severe and cold; but his right hand
Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw
By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart
Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,
A multitudinous throng, around him knelt,
With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks
Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by,
Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,

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265

270

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Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues
Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,

Breathing in self contempt fierce blasphemies
Against the Dæmon of the World, and high
Hurling their armèd hands where the pure Spirit,
Serene and inaccessibly secure,

Stood on an isolated pinnacle,

The flood of ages combating below

The depth of the unbounded universe

Above, and all around

Necessity's unchanging harmony.

THE END

Lof Alastor and other Poems.]

The imprint of the Alastor volume is as follows:

"Printed by S. Hamilton, Weybridge, Surrey."

285

290

MONT BLANC.

[The next book put forth by Shelley after Alastor and other Poems was the little volume containing, among other things, the following poem, and whereof the title runs thus: "History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland: with Letters descriptive of a Sail Round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni. London, Published by T. Hookham, Jun. Old Bond Street; and C. and J. Ollier, Welbeck Street. 1817." The History and two of the letters are by Mrs. Shelley,-the rest of the letters, two in number, by Shelley to Peacock. This poem, as well as the Alastor, was included in the volume of Posthumous Poems (1824). In Shelley's preface to the Six Weeks' Tour, it is stated that Mont Blanc "was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untameable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang." Mrs. Shelley says the poem was inspired by the view, as Shelley "lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Vale of Chamouni."—H. B. F.]

MONT BLANC.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

I.

THE everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark-now glittering-now reflecting gloom-
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

10

II.

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep Ravine-
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,

Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud shadows1 and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning thro' the tempest;-thou dost lie,

15

I take it Shelley meant cloudshadows, but omitted the hyphen, as he often does in such cases, e. g. in the next line but one, ice gulphs.