so able a manner, for fantastic creations of his fancy or the expression of those opinions and sentiments with regard to human nature and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master passion of his soul.'— The Witch of Atlas and other smaller poems, 1820.-Hellas, inspired by the commencing struggle of the modern Hellenes to throw off the foreigners' yoke, and Adonais, 1821. The latter, an elegy on the death of his friend, Keats, scarcely excepting Milton's Lycidas, is the most exquisite and pathetic In Memoriam ever composed. That the eulogy of the supposed martyred poet, and the indignation at his literary assassins may seem extravagant, does not detract from the intrinsic merits of the poem.-The Sensitive Plant, Ode to a Skylark, and The Cloud, 1820, are some of the most charming among the collection of his miscellaneous pieces, which are all penetrated, more or less, with a divine enthusiasm. The Ode to a Skylark, may be thought one of the most sublime of all Shelley's inspirations: in point of rapt and genuine feeling and sympathy with the subject, it is, indeed, unrivalled in any language. He pours out his whole soul in ecstatic rapture, and with the Lark mounts 'higher still and higher.'

It has been already observed that it is given to few only to properly appreciate the poetry, and still less the inspiring influences, of Shelley. He is too much in earnest, too spiritual, too conscious of human suffering and human destiny, to find sympathy amongst the superficial crowd. With the select few, however, he will always occupy, it may be presumed, one of the very highest places in the ranks of the immortals. He is preeminently the most spiritual of all poets: he is the most one with Nature.' He is, pre-eminently, the Prophet-Poet: the English Isaiah in verse. A more glorious title to admiration even than his exquisite genius, his profound sympathy with the suffering and wrongs of all sentient life, his unaffected hatred of all injustice and oppression, his fervent and allmastering love of truth, and his gentleness and refinement of soul demand the reverence of all to whom it is given to know and to approve the truth; at whose simple but sublime altar sacrificing rank, wealth, and all that the world holds dear, he has earned, by the witness of 'a good confession,' an exalted place for ever amongst the noble army of martyrs.' In reading him, more than any other of the world's intellectual luminaries, it is possible to feel:

'How charming is Divine Philosophy:

6

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute.'

It may be thought that his well-known religious convictions demand some notice, even in so slight a sketch of his works: but, it may also be thought by some that so solemn a subject is best and most wisely left to the test of the individual conscience. There seems a certain fitness in the end of so ethereal a nature. Drowned while on a boating

excursion in the bay of Spezzia, his body, after its recovery, according to the then practice of the Italian governments in the case of bodies washed ashore, was burned to ashes on the funeral pyre, and so was reduced to its original elements. The collected ashes were finally interred in the Protestant cemetery at Rome.

DEATH AND SLEEP.

How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;

The other, rosy as the morn,
When, throned on ocean's wave,
It blushes o'er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!

Hath then the gloomy Power
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres
Seized on her sinless soul?

Must then that peerless form

Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart, those azure veins
Which steal like streams along a field of snow,
That lovely outline, which is fair

As breathing marble, perish?

Must putrefaction's breath

Leave nothing of this heavenly sight
But loathsomeness and ruin?
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it only a sweet slumber

Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning

Chaseth into darkness?

Will Ianthe wake again,

And give that faithful bosom joy Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch

Light, life, and rapture from her smile?

Yes! she will wake again,

Although her glowing limbs are motionless,
And silent those sweet lips,

Once breathing eloquence

That might have soothed a tiger's rage, Or thaw'd the cold heart of a Conqueror. Her dewy eyes are closed,

And on their lids, whose texture fine Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath, The baby-Sleep is pillow'd.

Her golden tresses shade

The bosom's stainless pride,

Curling like tendrils of the parasite

Around a marble column.

Queen Mab.

THE VICTORY.

HARK! whence that rushing sound!
'Tis like the wondrous strain
That round a lonely ruin swells,
Which, wandering on the echoing shore,
The enthusiast hears at evening:
"Tis softer than the west wind's sigh;
Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes

Of that strange lyre whose strings
The genii of the breezes sweep:

Those lines of rainbow light

Are like the moonbeams when they fall
Through some cathedral window, but the tints
Are such as may not find
Comparison on earth.

Behold the chariot of the Faery Queen!
Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,
And stop obedient to the reins of light:
These the Queen of Spells drew in,
She spread a charm around the spot,
And leaning graceful from the ethereal car,
Long did she gaze, and silently,

Upon the slumbering maid.

Oh! not the vision'd poet in his dreams,

When silvery clouds float through the 'wilder'd brain, When every sight of lovely, wild, and grand,

Astonishes, enraptures, elevates--
When fancy at a glance combines
The wondrous and the beautiful—
So bright, so wild, so fair a shape
Hath ever yet beheld,

As that which rein'd the coursers of the air,
And pour'd the magic of her gaze
Upon the sleeping maid.

The broad and yellow moon Shone dimly through her form--That form of faultless symmetry; The pearly and pellucid car

Moved not the moonlight's line : "Twas not an earthly pageant; Those who had look'd upon the sight,

Passing all human glory,
Saw not the yellow moon,

Saw not the mortal scene,
Heard not the night-wind's rush,
Heard not an earthly sound,
Saw but the fairy pageant,
Heard but the heavenly strains
That fill'd the lonely dwelling.

The Fairy's frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud,
That catches but the palest tinge of even,
And which the straining eye can hardly seize
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,
Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star
That gems the glittering coronet of morn,
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,
Yet with an undulating motion
Sway'd to her outline gracefully.

From her celestial car

The Fairy Queen descended,
And thrice she waved her wand
Circled with wreaths of amaranth:
Her thin and misty form,
Moved with the moving air,
And the clear silver tones,
As thus she spoke, were such
As are unheard by all but gifted ear:

'Stars! your balmiest influence shed!
Elements! your wrath suspend!
Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds
That circle thy domain !