"SAD STORM WHOSE TEARS ARE VAIN, BARE WOODS WHOSE BRANCHES STAIN, 394 "WHEN HEARTS HAVE ONCE MINGLED-(PERCY B. SHELLEY) PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. With thy clear keen joyance, Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy note flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.* Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! * "Sad things, in this life of breath, Are truest, saddest, sweetest." ROBERT BUCHANAN. LOVE FIRST LEAVES THE WELL-BUILT NEST."-SHELLEY. DEEP CAVES AND DREARY MAIN, WAIT FOR THE WORLD'S WRONG!"-SHELLEY. "HOW SWEET IT IS TO SIT AND READ THE TALES OF MIGHTY POETS, AND TO HEAR THE WHILE 66 WONDERFUL IS DEATH-DEATH AND HIS BROTHER SLEEP! BEAUTY INEXPRESSIBLE. Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 395 [In the spring of 1820, says Mrs. Shelley, we (that is, herself and the poet) spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. "It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes where myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the Skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems." Of this exquisitely melodious and sensuous lyric, Leigh Hunt justly says, that in sweetness it is inferior only to Coleridge-in rapturous passion, to no man. "It is like the bird it sings-enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, continuous, and alonesmall, but filling the heavens. Notwithstanding Shakespeare's lark singing at heaven's gate,' the larger effusion of Shelley will be identified with thoughts of the bird hereafter, in the minds of all who are susceptible of its beauty."-LEIGH HUNT, Imagination and Fancy, p. 295.] BEAUTY INEXPRESSIBLE. WEET lamp! my moth-like muse has burnt its Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, A lute which those whom Love has taught to play AND DOVE-EYED PITY'S MURMURED PAIN."-PERCY B. SHelley. SWEET MUSIC WHICH, WHEN THE ATTENTION FAILS, FILLS THE DIM PAUSE."-PERCY B. SHELLEY. VICE IS DISCORD, WAR, AND MISERY; BUT VIRTUE And lull fond grief asleep?—a buried treasure? The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, See where she stands! a mortal shape indued ; A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy Into his summer grave. [From the " Epipsychidion -a poem to be read by every student who would arrive at a just conception of the character and exaltation of Shelley's genius.] "FIRST OUR PLEASURES DIE, AND THEN OUR HOPES, AND THEN OUR FEARS, AND WHEN These are DEAD THE DEBT IS DUE; DUST CLAIMS DUST, AND WE DIE TOO."-SHELLEY. [This song, says Leigh Hunt, is a great favourite with musicians; and no wonder. Beaumont and Fletcher never wrote anything of the kind more lovely.] IS PEACE, AND HAPPINESS, AND HARMONY."-SHELLEY. "THE LOFTIEST STAR OF UNASCENDED HEAVEN PINNACLED DIM IN THE INTENSE INANE."-PERCY B. SHELLEY. 66 MUSIC ITSELF THE ECHO OF THE HEART."-PERCY B. SHELLEY. Sustained itself with terror Over a gulf, and with the With which it clings seems slowly coming down; yet, clinging, leans; neath this crag, Huge as despair, as if in The melancholy mountain 66 DEATH IS THE VEIL THAT THOSE WHO LIVE CALL LIFE."-SHELLEY. "MAN, ONE HARMONIOUS SOUL OF MANY A SOUL, WHOSE NATURE IS ITS OWN DIVINE CONTROL."-SHELLEY. 398 "THE DULL SNEER OF SELF-LOVED IGNORANCE."-SHELLEY. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. Raging among the caverns; and a bridge [From the tragedy of "The Cenci," act iii., scene 1.-This picture is worthy of a place in Dante's "Inferno."] "CUSTOM MAKETH BLIND AND OBDURATE THE LOFTIEST HEARTS."-PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. "THE DEAD WHO LEAVE THE STAMP OF EVER-BURNING THOUGHTS ON MANY A PAGE."-SHELLEY. TO NIGHT. WIFTLY walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee; When light rode high, and the dew was gone, FAMILIAR ACTS ARE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH LOVE."-SHELLEY. |