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But, above all other things,

Spirit, I love thee;

Thou art love and life! O come,

Make once more my heart thy home.

A FRAGMENT.

As a violet's gentle eye Gazes on the azure sky, Until its hue grows like what it beholds; As a gray and empty mist Lies like solid amethyst,

Over the western mountain it enfolds,

When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow;

As a strain of sweetest sound Wraps itself the wind around, Until the voiceless wind be music too: As aught dark, vain and dull, Basking in what is beautiful,

Is full of light and love.

ΤΟ

MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken;

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

LINES

WRITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON.

WHAT! alive and so bold, O Earth?

Art thou not over-bold?

What! leapest thou forth as of old

In the light of thy morning mirth,
The last of the flock of the starry fold?
Ha! leapest thou forth as of old?

Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled,
And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead?

How! is not thy quick heart cold?

What spark is alive on thy hearth?

How! is not his death-knell knolled?
And livest thou still, Mother Earth?
Thou wert warming thy fingers old
O'er the embers covered and cold

Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled;

What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?

"Who has known me of old," replied Earth, "Or who has my story told?

It is thou who art over-bold."

And the lightning of scorn laughed forth As she sung, "To my bosom I fold

All my sons when their knell is knolled,

And so with living motion all are fed,

And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead.

"Still alive and still bold," shouted Earth, "I grow bolder, and still more bold. The dead fill me ten thousand-fold

Fuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth; I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold, Like a frozen chaos uprolled,

Till by the spirit of the mighty dead

My heart grew warm.

I feed on whom I fed.

"Ay, alive and still bold," muttered Earth, "Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled,

In terror, and blood, and gold,

A torrent of ruin to death from his birth.

[blocks in formation]

Leave the millions who follow to mould

The metal before it be cold,

And weave into his shame, which like the dead Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled."

TO-MORROW.

WHERE art thou, beloved To-morrow?
When young and old, and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,—

In thy place-ah! well-a-day!
We find the thing we fled-To-day.

GINEVRA.*

WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train

*This fragment is a poem which Shelley intended to write founded on a story to be found in the first volume of a book entitled "L'Osservatore Fiorentino."

Of objects and of persons passed like things
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,

Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;

The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.

And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,—
And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious, but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight.
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
Was less heavenly fair-her face was bowed,
And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
Were mirrored in the polished marble stair
Which led from the cathedral to the street;
And even as she went her light fair feet
Erased these images.

The bride-maidens who round her thronging

came,

Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,

Envying the unenviable; and others

Making the joy which should have been another's

Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
Sighing to think of an unhappy home;

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