Where Silence says, Mine is the dell;

And not a murmur from the plain,
And not an echo from the fell,
Disputes her silent reign.

BIGOTRY'S VICTIM.1

I.

DARES the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind
Repose trust in his footsteps of air?

No! Abandon'd he sinks in a trance of despair,
The monster transfixes his prey,

On the sand flows his life-blood away;

Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,
Protracting the horrible harmony.

II.

Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,
Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,
Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches,
Thirsting-aye, thirsting for blood;

And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;
Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;
For hunger, not glory, the prey

Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead,
Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer's head.

1 From Hogg's Life of Shelley, Vol. I, p. 351. The letter in which it occurs is dated "Lincoln's Inn Fields, April 28, 1811." Shelley appears to have been staying with his cousin,

Mr. Grove. The date may be accepted as that of the verses, for at the end of the letter we read-"There it is-a mad effusion of this morning!"

III.

Though weak, as the lama, that bounds on the mountains,
And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air,
Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains,
Though a fiercer than tiger is there.

Though more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,
Though its shadow eclipses the day,

And the darkness of deepest dismay

Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,
And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.

IV.

They came to the fountain to draw from its stream,
Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see;
They bathed for a while in its silvery beam,

Then perish'd, and perish'd like me.

For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;
The most tenderly loved of my soul.

Are slaves to his hated control.

He pursues me, he blasts me! 'Tis in vain that I fly: What remains, but to curse him,-to curse him and die?

TO THE MOONBEAM.1

I.

MOONBEAM, leave the shadowy vale,
To bathe this burning brow.
Moonbeam, why art thou so pale,
As thou walkest o'er the dewy dale,

1 From Hogg's Life of Shelley, Vol. I, p. 377, where it appears in a letter dated "Field Place, May 17, 1811,"

and is commented on by Shelley in the words, "There is a rhapsody!"

Where humble wild flowers grow?

Is it to mimic me?

But that can never be;

For thine orb is bright,

And the clouds are light,

That at intervals shadow the star-studded night.

II.

Now all is deathy still on earth,
Nature's tired frame reposes,

And ere the golden morning's birth
Its radiant hues discloses,

Flies forth its balmy breath.

But mine is the midnight of Death,
And Nature's morn,

To my bosom forlorn,

Brings but a gloomier night, implants a deadlier thorn.

III.

Wretch! Suppress the glare of madness

Struggling in thine haggard eye,

For the keenest throb of sadness,

Pale Despair's most sickening sigh,
Is but to mimic me;

And this must ever be,

When the twilight of care,

And the night of despair,

Seem in my breast but joys to the pangs, that wake there.

ON A FÊTE AT CARLTON HOUSE.1

(FRAGMENT).

By the mossy brink,

With me the Prince shall sit and think;

Shall muse in visioned Regency,

Rapt in bright dreams of dawning Royalty.

ΤΟ

O THOU

Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold
But swiftly leading to those awful limits

Which mark the bounds of time, and of the space
When time shall be no more,-wilt thou not turn
Those spirit-beaming eyes, and look on me,
Until I be assured that earth is heaven,

And heaven is earth?

1 This fragment was printed by Mr. Rossetti with the following note:

"This is the sole now known fragment from a poem of about fifty lines which Shelley wrote and printed on a fête which had taken place towards the beginning of the summer of 1811. A stream of water had been made to meander down a long table; and the extravagance of the affair generally had excited some murmurs. Shelley, it is said, 'amused himself with throw

ing copies of the poem into the carriages of persons going to Carlton House after the fête. Mr. Garnett took these remaining lines down "from the mouth of the Rev. Mr. Grove, a relative of Shelley."

These lines were given by Mr. Rossetti from a transcript of Mr. Garnett's, taken from one of the Boscombe MSS. The date affixed by Mr. Rossetti is 1811.

TO A STAR.1

SWEET star, which gleaming o'er the darksome scene
Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance flyest,
Spanglet of light on evening's shadowy veil,

Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,
Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet
Than the expiring morn-star's paly fires.

Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,
And all is hushed,-all, save the voice of Love,
Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast
Of soft Favonius, which at intervals

Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but
Lulling the slaves of interest to repose
With that mild, pitying gaze! Oh, I would look
In thy dear beam till every bond of sense
Became enamoured-

LOVE'S ROSE.

I.

HOPES, that swell in youthful breasts,
Live they this, the waste of time?
Love's rose a host of thorns invests;
Cold, ungenial is the clime,
Where its honours blow.

1 This and the next effusion are from one of several undated letters in Hogg's Life of Shelley, Vol. I. They would seem to belong to the summer of 1811. These verses are preceded by the words-"I transcribe for you

a strange melange of maddened stuff, which I wrote by the midnight moon last night." They are followed by the comment "Ohe jam satis dementia! I hear you exclaim." Mr. Rossetti supplied the titles.