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 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, Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 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, Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled, How! is not thy quick heart cold? What spark is alive on thy hearth? How! is not his death-knell knolled? 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. 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? In thy place-ah! well-a-day! GINEVRA.* WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one *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 Ginevra from the nuptial altar went; The vows to which her lips had sworn assent And so she moved under the bridal veil, 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 |