So, Lionel according to his art Weaving his idle words, Melchior said: "She dreams that we are not yet out of bed; We'll put a soul into her, and a heart Which like a dove chased by a dove shall beat." 70 "Ay, heave the ballast overboard, And stow the eatables in the aft locker." "Would not this keg be best a little lowered?" No, now all's right." "Those bottles of warm tea(Give me some straw)—must be stowed tenderly; Such as we used, in summer after six, To cram in great-coat pockets, and to mix And, couched on stolen hay in those green harbours 80 With a bottle in one hand, As if his very soul were at a stand, Lionel stood when Melchior brought him steady :"Sit at the helm-fasten this sheet-all ready!" The chain is loosed, the sails are spread, The living breath is fresh behind, As with dews and sunrise fed, Comes the laughing morning wind;- citly to that point, merely noting that in Mrs. Shelley's editions we find the following variation : List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair; If I can guess a boat's emotions. And hangs upon the wave,1 and stems. Which fervid from its mountain source It sweeps into the affrighted sea; The Serchio, twisting forth Between the marble barriers which it clove At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm Down one clear path of effluence crystalline, 1 In the Posthumous Poems a hiatus is indicated after wave; but the words and stems the tempest of the appear first in Mr. Rossetti's edition. 2 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, until— but Mr. Rossetti found then in the MS. 95 100 103 110 115 3 So in the MS., but clear instead of superfluous in Mrs. Shelley's edi tions. 4 I presume Mr. Rossetti's emendation, pine for fir, is one of those he found in the MS. MUSIC.1 I. I PANT for the music which is divine, My heart in its thirst is a dying flower; II. Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound, It loosens the serpent which care has bound The dissolving strain, through every vein, III. As the scent of a violet withered up,. Which grew by the brink of a silver lake; And mist there was none its thirst to slake- IV. As one who drinks from a charmèd cup Of foaming, and sparkling and murmuring wine, Invites to love with her kiss divine. . . .. Mrs. Shelley gave this fragment in the Posthumous Poems and the first edition of 1839, in the form adopted in this edition; but in the second edition of 1839 she gave it in two forms, probably from different MSS. In the second version, which appears among Fragments (the first being among Poems of 1821), stanzas II and III are transposed, and the final quatrain is omitted. The variations are very slight; and it was evidently only by accident that both versions were given, -the second having been cancelled as early as 1847. 2 So in the version given by Mrs. 1 SONNET TO BYRON.1 [I AM afraid these verses will not please you, but] If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill The mind which, like a worm whose life may share Marks your creations rise as fast and fair Shelley among complete poems; but the in the version among fragments, where, also, we find had for has in the next line but one,-tank for mist in the fourth line of the next stanza, and whilst for while in the fifth line. 1 This sonnet has grown gradually under considerable disadvantages. The first intimation of it occurs in The Shelley Papers, first published in The Athenæum. At page 37 of the book reprinted from that paper we read as follows: "What his real opinion of Byron's genius was, may be collected from a sonnet he once showed me, and which the subject of it never saw. The sentiments accord well with that diffidence of his own powers-that innate modesty which always distinguished him. It began thus If I esteemed him less, envy would kill In Medwin's Life of Shelley (Vol. II, If I esteemed thee less, Envy would kill TWO FRAGMENTS ON LOVE.1 I. I FAINT, I perish with my love! I grow II. Faint with love, the Lady of the South Lay in the paradise of Lebanon Under a heaven of cedar boughs; the drought2 FRAGMENT. COME, thou awakener of the spirit's ocean, FRAGMENT. THE gentleness of rain was in the wind together the fourteen lines needed for the sonnet form." The fourteen lines thus put together are those given in the text. 1 These and the three fragments which follow them were given by Mr. Rossetti from copies of MSS. at Boscombe, furnished by Mr. Garnett. 2 I strongly suspect we should read drouth. |