Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope On the false earth's inconstancy? Did thine own mind afford no scope Of love, or moving thoughts to thee? That natural scenes or human smiles Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.1 Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted; The glory of the moon is dead; Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed; Thine own soul still is true to thee, But changed to a foul fiend through misery. This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever Would scourge thee to severer pangs. Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. 20 25 30 35 STANZAS.-APRIL, 1814. AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon, Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even: Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. 1 Of course the note of interrogation should, in strictness, come after wiles. I have left it at thee, as in Shelley's edition, because I have no doubt he preferred a method of punctuation in support of which, though eccentric, it may be urged that it ends the question where it does legitimately end, the last two lines being in reality an assertion. Wordsworth and Keats often followed this plan. 2 Drunk in Mrs. Shelley's editions. Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away! Tempt not with one last tear1 thy friend's ungentle mood: Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. Away, away! to thy sad and silent home; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. 10 The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head: The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, 15 Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet. The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, Thou in the grave shalt rest-yet till the phantoms flee 21 Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile, Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile. 1 Mrs. Shelley puts glance for tear. MUTABILITY. WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings We rest. A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise. One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow, 5 11 15 THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST. Ecclesiastes. THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, 1 Mrs. Shelley, whether quoting from memory or from MS., gave these two lines as an epigraph at the head of Chapter XLIX of Lodore; thus— Man's yesterday can ne'er be like his morrow, Nor aught endure save mutability. Is the flame of life so fickle and wan That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. O man! hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, This world is the nurse of all we know, And the coming of death is a fearful blow 5 10 15 To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel; When all that we know, or feel, or see, Shall pass like an unreal mystery. The secret things of the grave are there, Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? Who painteth the shadows that are beneath The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb ? Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be 20 25 With the fears and the love for that which we see? 30 A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day: Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Thou too, aerial Pile! whose pinnacles Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, 5 10 15 Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night. 20 The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: |