"MANY ARE STRONG AND RICH, AND WOULD BE JUST, BUT LIVE AMONG-(PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY)

"" WINTER ROBING WITH PURE SNOW AND CROWNS (SHELLEY)

THEIR SUFFERING FELLOW-MEN AS IF NONE FELT; THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO."-SHELLEY.

THE SPIRIT OF DELIGHT: AN INVOCATION.

ARELY, rarely comest thou,

R Spirit of Delight!

Wherefore hast thou left me now

Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day 'Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me

Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free

Thou wilt scoff at pain.

OF STARRY ICE THE GRAY GRASS AND BARE BOUGHS."-SHELLEY.

"THE HARMONIOUS MIND POURED ITSELF FORTH IN ALL-PROPHETIC SONG."-shelley.

400

"DEWY MORN AND ODOROUS NOON AND Even,-(shelley)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Spirit false thou hast forgot

All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade

Of a trembling leaf,

Thou with sorrow art dismayed;

Even the sighs of grief

Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.

Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure ;-
Pity then will cut away

Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovèst,
Spirit of Delight!

The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
And the starry night;

Autumn evening and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost ;

I love waves, and winds, and storms;
Everything almost

Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,

And such society

As is quiet, wise, and good;

Between thee and me

AND SOLEMN MIDNIGHT'S TINGLING SILENTNESS."-SHELLEY.

"AND IF WE WERE NOT WEAK, SHOULD WE BE LESS IN DEED THAN IN DESIRE?"-SHELLEY.

སེ

66 THE AWFUL SHADOW OF SOME UNSEEN POWER

THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION.

401

What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love-though he has wings,

And like light can flee;
But, above all other things,

Spirit, I love thee

Thou art love and life! Oh come,

Make once more my heart thy home!

[A graceful, melodious, and simple lyric, differing widely in feeling and character from the gorgeous "Adonais," or the intense passion of the Epipsychidion."]

"WE KNOW THAT WE HAVE POWER OVER ourselves TO DO AND SUFFER (PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY)

WHAT WE KNOW NOT TILL WE TRY, BUT SOMETHING NOBLER THAN TO LIVE AND DIE."-SHELLEY.

THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION.

[Described under cover of the ancient myth of Prometheus, who may
be regarded as the personification of "Foresight."]

HEN Prometheus

Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
And with this law alone, "Let man be free,"
Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law; to be
Omnipotent but friendless is to reign;

And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man
First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove,
With alternating shafts of frost and fire,

Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain-caves:
And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,

So ruining the lair wherein they raged.

FLOATS, THOUGH UNSEEN, AMONG US."-SHELLEY.

28

"WE ARE AS CLOUDS THAT VEIL THE MIDNIGHT MOON; HOW RESTLESSLY THEY GLEAM AND QUIVER,

402

"MAN'S YESTERDAY MAY NE'ER BE LIKE HIS MORROW;

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,

Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth,* fadeless blooms,
That they might hide, with thin and rainbow wings,
The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
The disunited tendrils of that vine

Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
And he tamed Fire, which, like some beast of prey,
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath

The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;

And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
And Music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
God-like, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine,
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.
He told the hidden powers of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun

They

* These are not meant to be identified with any existing flowers.
are to be taken in a poetical sense, as endowed with everlasting beauty. So
Tennyson,-

STREAKING THE DARKNESS RADIANTLY; YET SOON NIGHT CLOSES-THEY ARE LOST FOR EVER."-Shelley.

LOVE, HOPE, AND SELF-ESTEEM, LIKE CLOUDS DEPART,-(SHELLEY)

Changes his lair, and by what secret spell

The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea: *

He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,

The tempest-wingèd chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then

Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure aether shone,

And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
[From the "Prometheus Unbound: a Lyrical Drama," act ii., scene 4.]

"O MAN, HOLD ON IN COURAGE OF SOUL THROUGH THE STORMY SHADES OF THY WORLDLY WAY;-(SHELLEY)

THE BILLOWS OF CLOUD THAT AROUND THEE ROLL SHALL SLEEP IN THE LIGHT OF A WONDROUS DAY."-SHELLEY.

A GARDEN.

HE snowdrop, and then the violet,

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness.
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,

Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew

* Interlunar: a word of which Shelley seems to have been fond. uses elsewhere the expression,

"In her interlunar swoon."

AND COME, FOR SOME UNCERTAIN MOMENTS LENT."-Shelley.

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