FRAGMENT.1 My head is heavy, my limbs are weary, And it is not life that makes me move.. HOPE, FEAR, AND DOUBT.2 SUCH hope, as is the sick despair of good, Such doubt, as is pale Expectation's food Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass And when I went among my kind, with triple brass 1 This fragment is from the Relics of Shelley. 2 The first five lines of this fragment are from Relics of Shelley: the last nine were first given by Mrs. Shelley in her note on the Poems of 1820, in VOL. IV. F the first edition of 1839. I have ventured to connect them because they seem to me to be very clearly related. They form together an irregular sonnet with two lines unfinished. FRAGMENT: UNRISEN SPLENDOUR.1 UNRISEN splendour of the brightest sun, 1 From Relics of Shelley. [The year 1821 was a very fertile one with Shelley: the presence of friends at Pisa and the Baths of San Giuliano, recorded by Mrs. Shelley in her note on the Poems of 1821, would seem to have operated most favourably on the creative energy of the poet. The minor poems belonging to this year, wherein we first find traces of the companionship of Edward Williams and Jane," are most remarkable for variety, beauty, and mass; and it is to be remembered that Epipsychidion, Adonais, and Hellas, all belong to this year. Thus, although what is commonly called "human interest" found no development in Shelley's poetry after The Cenci, the poems of this later period abound in a very genuine human interest,-that of the persons associated with the several compositions; for behind these aery fabrics of Platonism and almost mystic contemplation, the attentive reader discerns clearly enough such substantial beings as the unfortunate Viviani and the hapless Keats, and the delightful couple whose greatest misfortune and perhaps also highest privilege was their acquaintance with Shelley.-H. B. F.] POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. DIRGE FOR THE YEAR.1 I. ORPHAN hours, the year is dead, Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep. II. As an earthquake rocks a corse Solemn hours! wail3 aloud For your mother in her shroud. III. As the wild air stirs and sways 1 Mrs. Shelley first gave this dirge in the Posthumous Poems, and afterwards placed it in the collected editions at the end of the Poems of 1821. As, however, it is dated the 1st of January, 1821, it should, I think, come at the beginning of this section. 2 So in the Posthumous Poems; but dead-cold in the editions of 1839, and Mr. Rossetti's. I suspect this later reading to be only a misprint. 3 The word wail is misprinted wait in the Posthumous Poems, but given rightly in the collected editions. |