Let nothing meet her eyes

But signs of Love's soft victories;

15

Let nothing meet her ear

But sounds of Love's sweet sorrow,

So that from faith no succour she may1 borrow,
But, guided by my spirit blind
And in a magic snare entwined,

She may now seek Cyprian.

Begin, while I in silence bind

My voice, when thy sweet song thou hast began.2

A VOICE (within).

What is the glory far above

All else in human life? ·

ALL.

Love! love!

[While these words are sung, the DEMON goes out at one door, and JUSTINA enters at another.

THE FIRST VOICE.

There is no form in which the fire

Of love its traces has impressed not.
Man lives far more in love's desire

Than by life's breath, soon possessed not.
If all that lives must love or die,
All shapes on earth, or sea, or sky,
With one consent to Heaven cry
That the glory far above

All else in life is

1 In the Posthumous Poems, we read she may; but in later editions may she.

VOL. IV.

T

2 So in the Posthumous Poems, and rightly, to rhyme with Cyprian; but in the collected editions, begun.

ALL.

Love O love!

JUSTINA.

Thou melancholy thought which art
So flattering and so sweet, to thee
When did I give the liberty
Thus to afflict my heart?
What is the cause of this new power
Which doth my fevered being move,
Momently raging more and more?

What subtle pain is kindled now
Which from my heart doth overflow
Into my senses?—

ALL.

Love, O, love!

JUSTINA.

'Tis that enamoured nightingale Who gives me the reply;

He ever tells the same soft tale

Of passion and of constancy
To his mate, who rapt and fond,
Listening sits, a bough beyond.

Be silent, Nightingale-no more
Make me think, in hearing thee
Thus tenderly thy love deplore,

If a bird can feel his so,
What a man would feel for me.

And, voluptuous vine, O thou

to me, however, that this and the correction in Scene II (p. 271) are not from any completed MS., but from some note or fragment of draft.

Who seekest most when least pursuing,

To the trunk thou interlacest

Art the verdure which embracest, And the weight which is its ruin,No more, with green embraces, vine,

Make me think on what thou lovest,-
For whilst thus thy boughs entwine,1

I fear lest thou should'st teach me, sophist,
How arms might be entangled too.
Light-inchanted sunflower, thou
Who gazest ever true and tender
On the sun's revolving splendour!
Follow not his faithless glance
With thy faded countenance,
Nor teach my beating heart to fear,
If leaves can mourn without a tear,
How eyes must weep! O Nightingale,
Cease from thy enamoured tale,-
Leafy vine, unwreathe thy bower,
Restless sunflower, cease to move,—
Or tell me all, what poisonous power
Ye use against me-

ALL.

Love! love! love!

JUSTINA.

It cannot be !-Whom have I ever loved?

Trophies of my oblivion and disdain,

Floro and Lelio did I not reject?

And Cyprian?—

[She becomes troubled at the name of Cyprian.

1 In Mrs. Shelley's editions,

For whilst thou thus thy boughs entwine,

but Mr. Rossetti was clearly right in

80

omitting thou. If Shelley left it standing, it must have been through oversight.

Did I not requite him

With such severity, that he has fled

Where none has ever heard of him again?--
Alas! I now begin to fear that this

May be the occasion whence desire grows bold,
As if there were no danger. From the moment
That I pronounced to my own listening heart,
Cyprian is absent, O me miserable!1

I know not what I feel!

[More calmly.

85

To think that such a man,

It must be pity whom all the world

90

Admired, should be forgot by all the world,

And I the cause.

[She again becomes troubled.

And yet if it were pity,

Floro and Lelio might have equal share,

For they are both imprisoned for my sake.

[Calmly.

Alas! what reasonings are these? it is

Enough I pity him, and that, in vain,

Without this ceremonious subtlety.

And woe is me! I know not where to find him now, Even should I seek him through this wide world.

Enter DEMON.

100

DÆMON.

Follow, and I will lead thee where he is.

1 So in the Posthumous Poems; but O miserable me! in the collected editions.

2 Mr. Rossetti omits this word And, on his own authority, to rectify the metre, and suggests a different rectification by reading the two lines thus :

And woe is me! I know not where to find him Now should I seek him even through this wide world.

I suspect this is a case in which the lines were left unfinished, not one of corruption, and therefore one in which no interference is safe.

JUSTINA.

And who art thou, who hast found entrance hither,
Into my chamber through the doors and locks?
Art thou a monstrous shadow which my madness
Has formed in the idle air?

Called by the thought which tyrannizes thee
From his eternal dwelling; who this day

Is pledged to bear thee unto Cyprian.

JUSTINA.

So shall thy promise fail. This agony
Of passion which afflicts my heart and soul
May sweep imagination in its storm;

110

The will is firm.

DÆMON.

Already half is done

In the imagination of an act.

The sin incurred, the pleasure then remains;
Let not the will stop half-way on the road.

JUSTINA.

I will not be discouraged, nor despair,
Although I thought it, and although 'tis true.
That thought is but a prelude to the deed-
Thought is not in my power, but action is:
I will not move my foot to follow thee.

DEMON.

115

120

But a far1 mightier wisdom than thine own

But far a, in the Posthumous

position later editions give the words

Poems, seemingly an accidental trans- as in the text.