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Rocks the year:-be calm and mild,
Trembling hours, she will arise

With new love within her eyes.

IV.

January grey is here,

Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,

March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps-but, O, ye hours,
Follow with May's fairest flowers.

TO NIGHT.1

I.

SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!

II.

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,

Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;2
Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long sought!

1 This and the nine poems which follow it all appear in the Posthumous Poems (1824).

2 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, day, with a small d.

III.

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his1 rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.

IV.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,

Murmured like a noon-tide bee,

Shall I nestle near thy side?

Wouldst thou me ?-And I replied,
No, not thee!

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FROM THE ARABIC.

AN IMITATION.1

I.

My faint spirit was sitting in the light
Of thy looks, my love;

It panted for thee like the hind at noon.
For the brooks, my love.

Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight
Bore thee far from me;

My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
Did companion thee.

II.

Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,

Or the death they bear,

The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
With the wings of care;

In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,

Shall mine cling to thee,

Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,
It may bring to thee.

1 This song is said by Medwin to be "almost a translation" from a passage in a very remarkable book,- Antar, a Bedoween Romance, by Terrick Hamilton, in 4 vols. (London 1819 and

1820). I have not succeeded in identifying the passage; but I confess I have not, with that view, read through the book, which is full of love-songs done in poetic prose.

TO EMILIA VIVIANI.1

MADONNA, wherefore hast thou sent to me
Sweet basil and mignonette ??

Embleming love and health, which never yet
In the same wreath might be.

Alas, and they are wet!

Is it with thy kisses or thy tears?
For never rain or dew

Such fragrance drew

From plant or flower-the very doubt endears

My sadness ever new,

The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee.3

TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea ?

1 In the Posthumous Poems, this madrigal is headed "TO E*** V***,” and dated March, 1821.

2 Spelt mignionette in Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1824 and 1839.

3 Mr. Garnett (Relics of Shelley) gives as the commencement of a

second stanza of this poem the first of
the three following lines: the other
two lines, for which I am indebted to
Mr. Garnett, have not been published
till now:

Send the stars light, but send not love to me,
In whom love ever made
Health like a heap of embers soon to fade,

LINES.

I.

FAR, far away, O ye
Halcyons of memory,
Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast ;-
No news of your false spring
To my heart's winter bring,
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.

II.

Vultures, who build your bowers
High in the Future's towers,
Withered hopes on hopes are spread,

Dying joys choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.

THE FUGITIVES.

I.

THE waters are flashing,

The white hail is dashing,

The lightnings are glancing,
The hoar-spray is dancing-
Away!

The whirlwind is rolling,

The thunder is tolling,

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