You had a manly heart. Bear up! bear up!

120

O dearest Lady, put your gentle head Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile; Your eyes look pale, hollow, and overworn, With heaviness of watching and slow grief. Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune,

Not cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old thing,

Some outworn and unused monotony,
Such as our country gossips sing and spin,
Till they almost forget they live. Lie
down-

So, that will do. Have I forgot the words?
Faith! they are sadder than I thought they

were.

SONG

False friend, wilt thou smile or weep 130
When life is laid asleep?
my
Little cares for a smile or a tear,
The clay-cold corpse upon the bier!
Farewell! Heigh-ho!

What is this whispers low?
There is a snake in thy smile, my dear;
And bitter poison within thy tear.

Sweet sleep! were death like to thee,
Or if thou couldst mortal be,
I would close these eyes of pain;
When to wake? Never again.
O World! farewell!
Listen to the passing bell!
It says, thou and I must part,
With a light and a heavy heart.

140

(The scene closes)

SCENE IV. - A Hall of the Prison. Enter CAMILLO and BERNARDO.

CAMILLO

The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent.

He looked as calm and keen as is the engine

Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself

From aught that it inflicts; a marble form, A rite, a law, a custom; not a man.

He frowned, as if to frown had been the

trick

The Mask of Anarchy was composed in the fall of 1819, soon after the Manchester riot of that summer. The Manchester or 'Peterloo Massacre,' as it was called, was occasioned by an attempt to hold a mass meeting on August 9, 1819, at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, in behalf of parliamentary reform. It was declared illegal and forbidden by the magistrates, and was in consequence postponed. It was held August 16, and attended by several thousands. The chief constable was ordered to arrest the ringleaders, and in particular the chairman, Henry Hunt, an agitator unconnected with Leigh Hunt. He asked

military aid, and went accompanied by forty cavalrymen; on the failure of the officer and his escort to penetrate the crowd which surrounded them, orders were given three hundred hussars to disperse the people; in the charge six persons were killed, twenty or thirty received sabre wounds, and fifty or more were injured in other ways. Eldon was Lord High Chancellor, Sidmouth, Home Secretary, and Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary; the government supported the authorities and publicly approved their conduct. News of these events reached Shelley while still residing at the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn, and employed in