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III.

O lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!1

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast ;-
Oh! press it to thine own again,2
Where it will break at last.

CANCELLED PASSAGE.S

O pillow cold and wet with tears!
Thou breathest sleep no more!

TO SOPHIA.1

I.

THOU art fair, and few are fairer,
Of the nymphs of earth or ocean.
They are robes that fit the wearer-

1 This line is pointed as in The Liberal: Mrs. Shelley gives it, in all editions, thus:

I die, I faint, I fail!

2 In The Liberal this line stands O press me to thine own again,

and in the Posthumous Poems

Oh! press it close to thine again.

3 Mr. Rossetti found these two lines in the note-book containing Charles the First. He gives them as "apparently belonging" to The Indian Serenade.

4 These stanzas, which were first published by Mr. Rossetti in 1870, were addressed by Shelley to Miss

Sophia Stacey. "This lady," says Mr. Rossetti, was a ward of Mr. Parker, an uncle by marriage of Shelley, living in Bath. She saw a good deal of the poet and his wife in Italy from time to time, having lived three months in the same house with them in Florence -Madame Du Plantis', Via Val Fonda. She eventually married Captain J. P. Catty, R.E." I am very much indebted to Major General Catty of the 46th Regiment for permission to inIclude in this edition these beautiful verses and those entitled Time Long Past, which will be found among the poems of 1820.

Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion. Ever falls and shifts and glances,

As the life within them dances.

II.

Thy deep eyes, a double planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness

With soft clear fire. The winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of gentle gladness
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.

III.

If whatever face thou paintest

In those eyes grows pale with pleasure, If the fainting soul is faintest

When it hears thy harp's wild measure, Wonder not that, when thou speakest, Of the weak my heart is weakest.

IV.

As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds waken,

As the birds at thunder's warning,

As aught mute but deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit,
Is my heart when thine is near it.

FRAGMENT: A SOUL KNOWN.1

I AM as a spirit who has dwelt
Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt

His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known
The inmost converse of his soul, the tone
Unheard but in the silence of his blood,
When all the pulses in their multitude
Image the trembling calm of summer seas.
I have unlocked the golden melodies
Of his deep soul, as with a master-key,
And loosened them and bathed myself therein
Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist
Clothing his wings with lightning.

FRAGMENT: IS NOT TO-DAY ENOUGH?

Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?

Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?

And will the day that follows change thy doom? Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;

And who waits for thee in that cheerless home Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

1 This and the next five fragments are from Relics of Shelley. Mr. Garnett assigns them to the year 1819.

I have supplied the headings for convenience of reference.

FRAGMENT: QUESTIONS.

Is it that in some brighter sphere

We part from friends we meet with here?
Or do we see the Future pass
Over the Present's dusky glass?

Or what is that that makes us seem
To patch up fragments of a dream,
Part of which comes true, and part

Beats and trembles in the heart?

FRAGMENT: TO ITALY.

As the sunrise to the night,

As the north wind to the clouds, As the earthquake's fiery flight, Ruining mountain solitudes,

Everlasting Italy,

Be those hopes and fears on thee.

FRAGMENT OF AN INVITATION.

FOLLOW to the deep wood's weeds,

Follow to the wild briar dingle,
Where we seek to intermingle,

And the violet tells her tale

To the odour-scented gale,
For they two have enough to do

Of such work as I and you.

THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE.

AT the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapt in sweet wild melodies-
Like an exhalation wreathing
To the sound of air low-breathing
Through Eolian pines, which make
A shade and shelter to the lake
Whence it rises soft and slow;
Her life breathing [limbs] did flow
In the harmony divine

Of an ever-lengthening line

Which enwrapt her perfect form

With a beauty clear and warm.

FRAGMENT: LOVE THE UNIVERSE.1

AND who feels discord now or sorrow?
Love is the universe to-day-

These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.

1 This and the next three fragments were first given by Mrs. Shelley in the first edition of 1839,-without titles.

I have supplied the headings, here as in some other cases, for convenience of reference.

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