But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds

threw

Or birds within the noonday ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew,
And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells forever burst,
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood-lawns interpersed

With overarching elms, and caverns cold,

And violet banks where sweet dreams brood; but they

Pursued their serious folly as of old.

And, as I gazed, methought that in the way

The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June

When the south wind shakes the extinguished

day;

And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the

young moon ·

When on the sunlit limits of the night

Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,

And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might

63 shunned, Boscombe MS. || spurned, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. 70 Boscombe MS. || wood lawn-interspersed, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear

The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair;

So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendor; and a Shape
So sate within, as one whom years deform,

Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb;
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape

Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume

The guidance of that wonder-winged team;
The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
Were lost I heard alone on the air's soft stream

The music of their ever-moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded; little profit brings

Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun,
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the
sphere

Of all that is, has been or will be done;
So ill was the car guided but it passed
With solemn speed majestically on.

84 its her, Rossetti.

The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,

Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
like clouds
saw,
the thunder blast,

And

upon

The million with fierce song and maniac dance
Raging around. Such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror's advance

Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senate-house, and forum, and theatre,
When

upon the free

Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the just similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for, where'er

The chariot rolled, a captive multitude
Was driven;

power

- all those who had grown old in

Or misery; all who had their age subdued

By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;

All those whose fame or infamy must grow
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of this green earth with them forever low;

All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the conquerors, but, as soon
As they had touched the world with living flame,

109 thunder, Boscombe MS. || thunder's, Mrs. Shelley, 18391. 112 greet, Boscombe MS. || meet, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems.

Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem,

Were neither mid the mighty captives seen,
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,

Nor those who went before fierce and obscene.
The wild dance maddens in the van; and those
Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,

Outspeed the chariot, and without repose
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows.

They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
Of that fierce spirit whose unholy leisure

Was soothed by mischief since the world begun, Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair;

And, in their dance round her who dims the sun,

Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in

air

As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now,
Bending within each other's atmosphere,

Kindle invisibly, and, as they glow,
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to their bright destruction come and go:

Till, like two clouds into one vale impelled

That shake the mountains when their lightnings

mingle

And die in rain, the fiery band which held

Their natures, snaps, while the shock still may tingle;

One falls and then another in the path
Senseless, nor is the desolation single,

Yet ere I can say where, the chariot hath
Passed over them nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the ocean's wrath

Is spent upon the desert shore. Behind,
Old men and women foully disarrayed
Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind

And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed, Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still

Farther behind and deeper in the shade.

But not the less with impotence of will
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfil

Their work, and in the dust from whence they

rose

Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie,

And past in these performs what

in those.

158 while, Boscombe MS. || omit, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. 168 Seeking, Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || Limping, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.