339

As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night
Was penetrating me with living light;
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
So many years -
that it was Emily.

Twin Spheres of light who rule this
passive Earth,

This world of love, this me; and into birth
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart
Magnetic might into its central heart;
And lift its billows and its mists, and guide
By everlasting laws each wind and tide
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
And lull its storms, each in the craggy

grave

350

Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers The armies of the rainbow-wingèd showers; And, as those married lights, which from

Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while
Night,

And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,

Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, o
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbors are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden
air

Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited, innocent and bold.
The blue Ægean girds this chosen home 430
With ever-changing sound and light and
foam

Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar; And all the winds wandering along the shore

Undulate with the undulating tide;

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide,

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, As clear as elemental diamond,

Or serene morning air; and far beyond, The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer

(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)

440

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers,

and halls

It is a favored place. Famine or Blight, Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light

Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they

Sail onward far upon their fatal way; The winged storms, chanting their thunderpsalm

To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, From which its fields and woods ever renew Their green and golden immortality.

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky

470

There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
Blushes and trembles at its own excess;
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen, 480
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests
green,

Filling their bare and void interstices.
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how

None of the rustic island-people know; 'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height

It overtops the woods; but, for delight, Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime

Had been invented, in the world's young prime,

Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, 490
And envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were, Titanic, in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then
grown

Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high;
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild vine interknit
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and, when they fade,
the sky

500

Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star-atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene,
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high.
towers

And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks,
and all that we

Read in their smiles, and call reality.

511

Adonais, perhaps the most widely read of the longer poems of Shelley, owes something of its charm to the fact noted by Mrs. Shelley that much in it 'seems now more applicable to Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned.' The elegy has contributed much to the feeling that links these two poets in one memory, though in life they were rather pleasant than intimate friends. Keats died at Rome, February 23, 1821; and Shelley composed the poem between the late days of May and June 11, or at the latest, June 16; it was printed at Pisa, under his own care, by July 13, and copies sent to London for issue there by his publisher. During the period of composition he felt that he was succeeding, and wrote of it as 'a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written;' and after its completion, he says, 'The Adonais, in spite of its mysticism, is the least imperfect of my compositions, and, as the image of my regret and honor for poor Keats, I wish it to be so.' He continued to indulge hopes of its success, as in the case of The Cenci, though on a different plane, and wrote to Ollier, 'I am especially curious to hear the fate of Adonais. I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of oblivion;' and, shortly after this, to Hunt, -' Pray tell me what effect was produced by Adonais. My faculties are shaken to atoms, and torpid. I can write nothing; and if Adonais had no success and excited no interest, what incentive can I have to write?' A month or two later he writes to Gisborne, still strong in his faith in the poem, -'I know what to think of Adonais, but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad poems of the day, I know not. It is absurd in any Review to criticise Adonais, and still more to pretend that the verses are bad.' His friends praised it, except Byron, who kept silence, perhaps, Shelley says, because he was mentioned in it. Shelley's letter to Severn has a peculiar interest :

...

'I send you the Elegy on poor Keats — and I wish it were better worth your acceptance. You will see, by the preface, that it was written before I could obtain any particular account of his last moments; all that I still know, was communicated to me by a friend

PLATO.

who had derived his information from Colonel Finch; I have ventured to express, as I felt, the respect and admiration which your conduct towards him demands.

'In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was, nor ever will be, a popular poet; and the total neglect and obscurity in which the astonishing remnants of his mind still lie, was hardly to be dissipated by a writer, who, however he may differ from Keats in more important qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental one, a want of popularity.

'I have little hope, therefore, that the poem I send you will excite any attention, nor do I feel assured that a critical notice of his writings would find a single reader. But for these considerations, it had been my intention to have collected the remnants of his compositions, and to have published them with a Life and Criticism. Has he left any poems or writings of whatsoever kind, and in whose possession are they? Perhaps you would oblige me by information on this point.'

It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove, at least, that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the of 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an