And leaving as swift lightning in its flight

Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night'

Of thought we know thus much of death,—no more
Than the unborn dream of our life before

Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.
The marriage feast and its solemnity

Was turned to funeral pomp-the company

With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,

On1 which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
The lamps which half extinguished in their haste
Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast,
Shewed as it were within the vaulted room
A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
Had past out of men's minds into the air.
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
Friends and relations of the dead, and he,

160

165

170

175

A loveless man, accepted torpidly
The consolation that he wanted not,

Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.
Their whispers made the solemn silence seem
More still some wept, . . .

Some melted into tears without a sob,

And some with hearts that might be heard to throb
Leant on the table, and at intervals
Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls
And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came
Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame
Of every torch and taper as it swept
From out the chamber where the women kept;-

1 Mr. Rossetti substitutes In for On.

180

185

Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled.
The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
And finding death their penitent had shrived,
Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning women came.-

190

195

In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,

And the spring came down

From the planet that hovers upon the shore

Where the sea of sunlight encroaches

On the limits of wintry night;

200

If the land, and the air, and the sea
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,

Ginevra!

She is still, she is cold.

On the bridal couch,

One step to the white death-bed,

And one to the bier,

And one to the charnel-and one, O where?

The dark arrow fled

In the noon.

Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled,

The rats in her heart

Will have made their nest,

And the worms be alive in her golden hair,1

1 I trust the proposal set forth in Mr. Rossetti's edition, to read breast

205

210

215

for heart may never be carried out,— or that of reading rest for sleep as the

While the spirit that guides the sun,
Sits throned in his flaming chair,
She shall sleep.

EVENING.

PONTE A MARE, PISA.1

I.

THE sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
And evening's breath, wandering here and there
Over the quivering surface of the stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer2 dream.

II.

There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;

And in the inconstant motion of the breeze
The dust and straws are driven up and down,
And whirled about the pavement of the town.

III.

Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immovably unquiet, and for ever

final word; but probably if these changes be made upon conjecture, the emendator will find it necessary to accommodate the colour of the dead Ginevra's hair to that she wore when living by a hateful innovation that would do almost as much to spoil the poem as the other emendation pro

posed. See p. 104, line 16,-"her dark locks."

1 First published by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems.

2 In the Posthumous Poems and first edition of 1839, the word here is silent; in the second edition summer is substituted.

It trembles, but it never fades away;

Go to the...

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

IV.

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of cinereous1 cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled-but
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
And over it a space of watery blue,
Which the keen evening star is shining through.

THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO.2

OUR boat is asleep on3 Serchio's stream,
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
The helm sways idly, hither and thither;

Dominic, the boat-man, has brought the mast,
And the oars and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast,
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.

The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering there,
To tower, and cavern, and rift and tree,
The owl and the bat fled drowsily.

Day had kindled the dewy woods,

And the rocks above and the stream below, And the vapours in their multitudes,

So in the MS. at Boscombe, but enormous in Mrs. Shelley's editions.

2 The greater part of this poem was first given by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems, with the date "July, 1821," affixed. Mr. Rossetti

5

10

obtained considerable additions to it from the note-book containing Charles the First; and these were first given to the world in his edition in 1870.

3 In the Posthumous Poems, in; but on in the collected editions.

And the Apennine's1 shroud of summer snow, And clothed with light of aëry gold

The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.

Day had awakened all things that be,

The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,
And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe,
And the matin-bell and the mountain bee:
Fire-flies were quenched on the dewy corn,
Glow-worms went out on the river's brim,
Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:
The beetle forgot to wind his horn,

The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun
Night's dreams and terrors, every one,
Fled from the brains which are their prey
From the lamp's death to the morning ray.

All rose to do the task He set to each,

Who shaped us to his ends and not our own; The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew or2 can be known.

And many rose

Whose woe was such that fear became desire ;-
Melchior and Lionel3 were not among those;
They from the throng of men had stepped aside,
And made their home under the green hill side.
It was that hill, whose intervening brow

Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye,4

gests, "these names symbolize Williams and Shelley."

In retouching Medwin's version of the Ugolino episode in the Inferno (canto XXXIII), Shelley used almost the same words,-" the steep ascent that from the Pisan is the screen of Lucca": only the italicized words are