Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode, Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,

The homes of the departed, dimly frowned

O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.

XXXVI.

Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows, Mile after mile we sailed, and 'twas delight

To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep And dark green chasms, shades beautiful and white, Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep, Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.

XXXVII.

And ever as we sailed, our minds were full
Of love and wisdom, which would overflow

In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful;
And in quick smiles whose light would come and go,
Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow
Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress—
For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,
That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less
Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.

XXXVIII.

Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling
Number delightful hours-for through the sky
The sphered lamps of day and night, revealing
New changes and new glories, rolled on high,
Sun, Moon, and moonlike lamps, the progeny
Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair:

On the fourth day, wild as a wind-wrought sea,
The stream became, and fast and faster bare
The spirit-winged boat, steadily speeding there.

XXXIX.

Steadily and swift, where the waves rolled like mounWithin the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour [tains Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains, The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar

Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore, Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child

Securely fled, that rapid stress before,

Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild, Wreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled.

XL.

The torrent of that wide and raging river
Is passed, and our aërial speed suspended.
We look behind; a golden mist did quiver
When its wild surges with the lake were blended:

Our bark hung there, as one line suspended Between two heavens, that windless waveless lake; Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended By mists, aye feed, from rocks and clouds they break, And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.

XLI.

Motionless resting on the lake awhile,

I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle,
And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear
The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound

Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near,
Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,

The charmed boat approached, and there its haven found.

END OF THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.

NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.

BY THE EDITOR.

66

SHELLEY possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect -a brilliant imagination and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led him (he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions. I say he fancied," because I believe the former to have been paramount, and that it would have gained the mastery even had he struggled against it. However, he said that he deliberated at one time whether he should dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics, and resolving on the former, he educated himself for it, discarding in a great measure his philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the study of the poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be added a constant perusal of portions of the Old Testament—the Psalms, the book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of which filled him with delight.

As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced by exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He was very fond of travelling, and ill health increased this restlessness. The sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made him pine, especially when our colder spring arrived, for a more genial climate. In 1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on the banks of the lake of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine, was passed alone in his boat-sailing as the wind listed, or weltering on the calm waters. The majestic aspect of nature ministered such thoughts as he afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on the Bridge of the Arve, and his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, were written at this time. Perhaps during this summer his genius was checked by association with another poet, whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for a period the more abstract and etherialised inspiration of Shelley. The saddest events awaited his return to England; but such was his fear to wound the feelings of others, that he never expressed the anguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by the persecutions he underwent; while the course of deep unexpressed passion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire to embody themselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling to real life.