TO WORDSWORTH. POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE. I HATED thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan throne Thou mightst have built thy Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer A frail and bloody pomp which time has swept In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre, For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust, And stifled thee, their minister. I know Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, That virtue owns a more eternal foe Than force or fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of time.1 SONNET. FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE. Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavalcanti. GUIDO, I would that Lappo, thou, and I, Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend Presumably by way of comment on this last line, Shelley printed next to it in the Alastor volume, under the title Superstition, an excerpt from his pri vately printed poem Queen Mab. He simply took the thirty-one lines beginning with— Thou taintest all thou lookest upon ! and ending with— And all their causes, to an abstract point, Converging, thou didst bend and called it God! (pages 47 and 48 of this volume) and substituted for the last line the two following Converging, thou didst give it name, and form, 2 A translation of Cavalcanti's Sonnet to Dante, beginning Io vegno il giorno a te infinite volte, will be found among Shelley's translations in a later volume. -ED. A magic ship, whose charmèd sails should fly With winds at will where'er our thoughts might wend, And that no change, nor any evil chance Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be, That even satiety should still enhance Between our hearts their strict community: And that the bounteous wizard then would place 1 Vanna and Bice and my gentle love, Companions of our wandering, and would grace With passionate talk, wherever we might rove, Our time, and each were as content and free As I believe that thou and I should be. TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS. Τὰν ἅλα τὰν γλαυκὰν ὅταν ὥνεμος ἀτρέμα βάλλῃ, κ.τ.λ. WHEN winds that move not its calm surface sweep The azure sea, I love the land no more; The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep Tempt my unquiet mind.-But when the roar Of ocean's grey abyss resounds, and foam Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst, I turn from the drear aspect to the home Of earth and its deep woods, where interspersed, When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody. 1 Whether by mistranslation or by misprint, the word my is obviously wrong, Bice being herself the love of Dante.-ED. Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea, Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot Has chosen.-But I my languid limbs will fling Beneath the plane, where the brook's murmuring Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not. THE DÆMON OF THE WORLD.' Quantum scire licet. PART I. Nec tantum prodere vati, Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot sæcula pectus. LUCAN, Phars. L. v. I. 176. How wonderful is Death, One pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon, The other glowing like the vital morn, It breathes over the world: Yet both so passing strange and wonderful! This poem is an elaborate revision of the first, second, eighth and ninth cantos of Queen Mab, and may be regarded as what Shelley in 1815 considered worth preserving in that volume. After making his revision, which exists in his own copy of Queen Mab now in my collection, he only published with Alastor the first of the two parts. The second was published for the first time in my library edition of his works in 1877.—ED. 10 Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton, Leave aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin ?— 20 On which the lightest heart might moralize? To watch their own repose? Will they, when morning's beam Flows through those wells of light, Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave ? Ianthe doth not sleep The dreamless sleep of death: 30 With interchange of hues mock the broad moon, Outwatching weary night, Without assured reward. On their translucent lids, whose texture fine 40 |