...

With what truth may I say -
Ronia, Roma, Roma,
Non è più come era prima!

Mrs. Shelley describes Shelley's grief for the death of this child: Shelley had suffered severely from the death of our son during this summer. His heart, attuned to every kindly affection, was full of burning love for his offspring. No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were torn from him.. When afterwards this child [William] died at Rome, he wrote, apropos of the English burying ground in that city: "This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death. My beloved child is buried here. I envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other crushes the affections."

II

Where art thou, my gentle child?
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds
Among these tombs and ruins wild;

Let me think that through low seeds Of sweet flowers and sunny grass Into their hues and scents may pass A portion

June, 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

LINES WRITTEN FOR THE POEM TO WILLIAM SHELLEY

I

THE world is now our dwelling-place;
Where'er the earth one fading trace

Of what was great and free does keep,
That is our home!
Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race
Shall our contented exile reap;
For who that in some happy place
His own free thoughts can freely chase
By woods and waves can clothe his face
In cynic smiles? Child! we shall weep.

II

This lament,