III.

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later,

To-night;

No leaf will be shaken

Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
Delight.

IV.

Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone

Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling

LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF LERICI.1

SHE left me at the silent time

When the moon had ceased to climb

The azure path of Heaven's steep,
And like an albatross asleep,
Balanced on her wings of light,
Hovered in the purple night,
Ere she sought her ocean nest
In the chambers of the West.
She left me, and I staid alone

Thinking over every tone

Which, though2 silent to the ear,

The inchanted heart could hear,

Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill;

And feeling ever-O too much!—
The soft vibration of her touch,
As if her gentle hand, even now,
Lightly trembled on my brow;

And thus, although she absent were,

1 This is one of the many treasures unearthed by Mr. Garnett and pub lished in the Relics of Shelley; but before these lines appeared in that volume, they were published in Macmillan's Magazine for June, 1862, with a preliminary note by Mr. Garnett, stating that they "were written at Lerici during the last few weeks of the author's life, as appears from the character of the scenery described as well as from the correspondence of the paper with that on which The Triumph of Life is written." Mr. Garnett adds "The exact date of composition may, perhaps, be inferred from the description of the moon, as

Balanced on her wings of light,
Hovering in the purple night,"

10

15

which seems to imply that she was then near the full, with little or no declination. These circumstances concurred on the 1st and 2nd of May, 1822, but at no other period during Shelley's residence at Lerici." There are two verbal variations between the Magazine and the Relics. I have given the readings of the Relics in the text, and recorded the variations, assuming that Mr. Garnett had authority for everything, but had, as every editor of a draft of Shelley's is pretty sure to have, to decide in many instances between two words both remaining uncancelled.

2 In the Magazine the word nove occurs between though and silent.

Her presence had made weak and tame
All passions, and I lived alone
In the time which is our own;

The past and future were forgot,

As they had been, and would be, not.

But soon, the guardian angel gone,
The dæmon reassumed his throne

In my faint heart. I dare not speak

My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak
I sat and saw the vessels glide
Over the ocean bright and wide,
Like spirit-winged chariots sent
O'er some serenest element

For ministrations strange and far;
As if to some Elysian star
Sailed for drink to medicine

Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.
And the wind that winged their flight
From the land came fresh and light,
And the scent of wingèd flowers,

And the coolness of the hours

Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,
Were scattered o'er the twinkling bay.
And the fisher with his lamp

And spear about the low rocks damp
Crept, and struck the fish which came
To worship the delusive flame.

Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
Extinguishes all sense and thought
Of the regret that pleasure leaves,
Destroying life alone, not peace!

1 In the Magazine we read watched for saw.

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

2 Mr. Rossetti reads They sailed; but without authority.

THE ISLE.1

THERE was a little lawny islet
By anemone and violet,

Like mosaic, paven:

And its roof was flowers and leaves
Which the summer's breath enweaves,

Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,

Each a gem engraven.

Girt by many an azure wave

With which the clouds and mountains pave

A lake's blue chasm.

LINES.2

I.

WE meet not as we parted,

We feel more than all may see,

My bosom is heavy-hearted,

And thine full of doubt for me.

One moment has bound the free.

II.

That moment is gone for ever,

Like lightning that flashed and died,
Like a snowflake upon the river,
Like a sunbeam upon the tide,
Which the dark shadows hide.

1 First given by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems.

2 From Relics of Shelley, as is also the next fragment.

III.

That moment from time was singled
As the first of a life of pain,
The cup of its joy was mingled
-Delusion too sweet though vain!
Too sweet to be mine again.

IV.

Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden
That its life was crushed by you,
Ye would not have then forbidden
The death which a heart so true
Sought in your briny dew.

V.

*

Methinks too little cost

For a moment so found, so lost!

FRAGMENT: TO THE MOON.

BRIGHT wanderer, fair coquette of heaven,
To whom alone it has been given
To change and be adored for ever,
Envy not this dim world, for never
But once within its shadow grew

One fair as