Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank Wan moonlight even to fulness: not a star Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds, Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice Slept, clasped in his embrace.-O, storm of death!

611

Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
Guiding its irresistible career

In thy devastating omnipotence,

Art king of this frail world, from the red field
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
His brother Death. A rare and regal prey 619
He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping

worms,

Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death

Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
Did he resign his high and holy soul
To images of the majestic past,

That paused within his passive being now, 630
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they

breathe

Through some dim latticed chamber. He did

place

His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,

Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm ;—and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses

The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,
The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear 640
Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing
there

At peace, and faintly smiling :-his last sight Was the great moon, which o'er the western line

Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness

seemed

To mingle. Now upon the jaggèd hills
It rests, and still as the divided frame

Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy

650

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still: And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp

Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

The stagnate night :-till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his

heart.

It paused-it fluttered.

remained

But when heaven

Utterly black, the murky shades involved 660
An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame-
No sense, no motion, no divinity—

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven did wander-a bright stream

Once fed with many-voiced waves—a dream Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, 670 Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,

Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale

From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,

Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man1 has drained, who

now,

Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever, 680
Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible

For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the, gentle, and the beautiful, 689
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things

The Wandering Jew was the subject of a composition in verse by Medwin and Shelley, written when Shelley was about fifteen years old, and as yet undiscovered so far as most of Shelley's portion is concerned. Ahasuerus is next conspicuous in Queen Mab, and was finally reintroduced into Shelley's last published work, Hellas.—ED.

Are done and said i' the world, and many worms And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice:-but thou art fled

Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!

Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips.
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes 700
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed-not even in thought. Nor, when
those hues

Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 710
And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe too deep for tears,' when all r
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 719
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

ΔΑΚΡΥΣΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΠΟΤΜΟΝ ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ.

[To COLERIDGE.]

O! THERE are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

As star-beams among twilight trees:-
Such lovely ministers to meet

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes

Beams that were never meant for thine, Another's wealth :-tame sacrifice

10

To a fond faith! still dost thou pine?
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth's inconstancy?

Did thine own mind afford no scope

Of love, or moving thoughts to thee? That natural scenes or human smiles

20

Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;

The glory of the moon is dead;

Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed;