II. "Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not; Who made and makes my lot As full of flowers as thine of weeds, III. Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of The dead and the unborn Forget thy life and love;2 Forget that thou must wake for ever; Forget the world's dull scorn; Forget lost health, and the divine Feelings which died in youth's brief morn; Be thine. IV. Like a cloud big with a May shower, My soul weeps healing rain, On thee, thou withered flower; Its light within thy gloomy breast 1 In Medwin's and Mrs. Shelley's versions, chased; but charmed in the MS. 2 Medwin reads woes: so does Mrs. Shelley in the first edition of 1839; but in the second, she substitutes love. 3 So in the second edition of 1839; but that in the first and in The Shelley Papers. Spreads1 like a second youth again. Possest. V. "The spell is done. How feel you now?" -The sleeper.-"What would do You good when suffering and awake? What would cure, that would kill me, Jane:2 Awhile, yet tempt me not to break II. As music and splendour The heart's echoes render No song when the spirit is mute:- Like the wind through a ruined cell, That ring the dead seaman's knell. III. When hearts have once mingled To endure what it once possest. The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home and your bier? IV. Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high: Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Leave thee naked to laughter, 1 So in the second edition of 1839; but in the first, and in the Posthumous Poems, we read the for thee. TO JANE-THE INVITATION.1 BEST and brightest, come away! The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, 1 A part of this and a part of the next poem were published by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems (1824), as one composition, under the single title of The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa; and this arrangement was followed in the first edition of 1839; but in the second edition of that year the poem was divided into two, as in the text, and given in substantial accordance with the autograph copy in Mr. Trelawny's hands, consuited by Mr. Rossetti for his edition. Mrs. Shelley, however, only called these two poems The Invitation and The Recollection. To both versions of the composition she affixed the date February, 1822." I am disposed to think that Shelley must have left at least two MSS. of this later form, beside that of the earlier form from which Mrs. Shelley gave her first version. The slight variations between her second version and Mr. Trelawny's MS. are recorded in the ensuing notes. Mr. Rossetti observes that the original title is "worth bearing in mind as determining the loca 10 lity"; but there is much more than that worthy, in my opinion, of careful preservation; and, as the variations of the early from the late version are very considerable, I extract some passages of the former in full in lieu of recording a number of additional variorum readings. Thus, the opening of The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa is as follows : Dearest, best and brightest, To the woods and to the fields! The eldest of the hours of spring, And smiled upon the silent sea, To take what this sweet hour yields;- |