Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
Like a wide lake of green fertility,

With streams and fields and marshes bare,

Divides from the far Apennines—which lie Islanded in the immeasurable air.

"What think you, as she lies in her green cove,
Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?"
"If morning dreams are true, why I should guess
That she was dreaming of our idleness,

And of the miles of watery way

We should have led her by this time of day."

"Never mind," said Lionel,

"Give care to the winds, they can bear it well
About yon poplar tops; and see

The white clouds are driving merrily,

And the stars we miss this morn will light
More willingly our return to-night.-
How it whistles, Dominic's long black hair!2
List my dear fellow; the breeze blows fair:
Hear how it sings into the air."

"Of us and of our lazy motions,"
Impatiently said Melchior,

"If I can guess a boat's emotions;

And how we ought, two hours before,
To have been the devil knows where."
And then, in such transalpine Tuscan
As would have killed a Della-Cruscan,

Shelley's. See Translations, in this volume.

1 I have followed Mr. Rossetti in printing these six lines as two speeches, question and answer. In Mrs. Shel

ley's editions they are but one speech. This portion of the poem, from How it whistles to fasten this sheet-all ready! is what Mr. Rossetti gave from the MS. I follow his edition impli

So, Lionel according to his art

Weaving his idle words, Melchior said:

"She dreams that we are not yet out of bed; We'll put a soul into her, and a heart

Which like a dove chased by a dove shall beat."

70

"Ay, heave the ballast overboard,

And stow the eatables in the aft locker."

"Would not this keg be best a little lowered?"

"No, now all's right."

Those bottles of warm tea

(Give me some straw)-must be stowed tenderly;

Such as we used, in summer after six,

To cram in great-coat pockets, and to mix
Hard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton,

And, couched on stolen hay in those green harbours
Farmers called gaps, and we schoolboys called arbours,
Would feast till eight."

75

With a bottle in one hand,

As if his very soul were at a stand,

Lionel stood when Melchior brought him steady :

Sit at the helm-fasten this sheet-all ready!"

The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,
The living breath is fresh behind,

As with dews and sunrise fed,

Comes the laughing morning wind ;—
The sails are full, the boat makes head
Against the Serchio's torrent fierce,
Then flags with intermitting course,

citly to that point, merely noting that in Mrs. Shelley's editions we find the following variation :

List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair;
How it scatters Dominic's long black hair,
Singing of us, and our lazy motions,
If I can guess a boat's emotions.

And hangs upon the wave, and stems.
The tempest of the..

Which fervid from its mountain source
Shallow, smooth and strong doth come,-
Swift as fire, tempestuously

It sweeps into the affrighted sea;
In morning's smile its eddies coil,
Its billows sparkle, toss and boil,
Torturing all its quiet light
Into columns fierce and bright.

The Serchio, twisting forth

Between the marble barriers which it clove

At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm
The wave that died the death which lovers love,
Living in what it sought; as if this spasm
Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling,
But the clear stream in full enthusiasm
Pours itself on the plain, then wandering
Down one clear path of effluence crystalline,
Sends its superfluous waves, that they may fling
At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine,
Then, through the pestilential desarts wild
Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted pine,*
It rushes to the Ocean.

1 In the Posthumous Poems a hiatus is indicated after wave; but the words and stems the tempest of the appear first in Mr. Rossetti's edition.

2 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, until—– but Mr. Rossetti found then in the MS.

95

100

103

110

115

3 So in the MS., but clear instead of superfluous in Mrs. Shelley's editions.

4 I presume Mr. Rossetti's emendation, pine for fir, is one of those he found in the MS.

MUSIC.1

I.

I PANT for the music which is divine,

My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;
Pour forth the sound like inchanted wine,
Loosen the notes in a silver shower;
Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,
I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.

II.

Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,
More, O more,-I am thirsting yet,

It loosens the serpent which care has bound
Upon my heart to stifle it;

The dissolving strain, through every vein,
Passes into my heart and brain.

III.

As the scent of a violet withered up,

Which grew by the brink of a silver lake;
When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,

And mist there was none its thirst to slake-
And the violet lay dead while the odour flew
On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue-

IV.

As one who drinks from a charmed cup

Of foaming, and sparkling and murmuring wine,
Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up,

Invites to love with her kiss divine. . . .

Mrs. Shelley gave this fragment in the Posthumous Poems and the first edition of 1839, in the form adopted in this edition; but in the second edition of 1839 she gave it in two forms, probably from different MSS. In the second version, which appears among Fragments (the first being among

Poems of 1821), stanzas II and III are transposed, and the final quatrain is omitted. The variations are very slight; and it was evidently only by accident that both versions were given, -the second having been cancelled as early as 1847.

2 So in the version given by Mrs.

SONNET TO BYRON.1

[I AM afraid these verses will not please you, but]

If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill
Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair
The ministration of the thoughts that fill

The mind which, like a worm whose life may share
A portion of the unapproachable,

Marks your creations rise as fast and fair
As perfect worlds at the Creator's will.
But such is my regard that nor your power
To soar above the heights where others [climb],
Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour
Cast from the envious future on the time,

Move one regret for his unhonoured name

Who dares these words :-the worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in homage of the God.

Shelley among complete poems; but the in the version among fragments, where, also, we find had for has in the next line but one,-tank for mist in the fourth line of the next stanza, and whilst for while in the fifth line.

This sonnet has grown gradually under considerable disadvantages. The first intimation of it occurs in The Shelley Papers, first published in The Athenæum. At page 37 of the book reprinted from that paper we read as follows:

"What his real opinion of Byron's genius was, may be collected from a sonnet he once showed me, and which the subject of it never saw. The sentiments accord well with that diffidence of his own powers-that innate modesty which always distinguished him. It began thus

If I esteemed him less, envy would kill
Pleasure, and leave to wonder and despair
The ministration of the thoughts that fill
My soul, which, as a worm may haply share
A portion of the unapproachable,
Marks his creations rise as fast and fair
As perfect worlds at the Creator's will,"