The lightest wind was in its nest,

The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep

The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

III

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the treetops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

IV

How calm it was! the silence there
By such a chain was bound
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed, from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain waste
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,

A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life, -

To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife;
And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there

Was one fair form that filled with love The lifeless atmosphere.

V

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,-
Each seemed as 't were a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light,

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,

And purer than the day,

In which the lovely forests grew,
As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighboring lawn,
And through the dark green wood

The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen,

Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.

Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast,

Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth expressed;
Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought,

Which from the mind's too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.

Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,

Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind,
Than calm in waters seen.

WITH A GUITAR: TO JANE

Shelley originally intended to give a harp to Mrs. Williams, and wrote to Horace Smith with regard to its purchase. The suggestion for the poem is found by Dr. Garnett in the fact that the front portion of the guitar is made of Swiss pine.' He continues: 'It is now clear how the poem took shape in Shelley's mind. The actual thought of the imprisonment of the Spirit of Music in the material of the instrument suggested Ariel's penance in the cloven pine; the identification of himself with Ariel and of Jane Williams with Miranda was the easiest of feats to his brilliant imagination; and hence an allegory of unequalled grace and charm, which could never have existed if the instrument had not been partly made of pine wood. The back, it should be added, is of mahogany, the finger board of ebony, and minor portions, chiefly ornamental, of some wood not identified. It was made by Ferdinando Bottari of Pisa in 1816. Having been religiously preserved since Shelley's death, it is in as perfect condition as when made. The

strings, it is said, are better than those that are produced now.

This guitar is also in a measure the subject of another of Shelley's most beautiful lyrics, "The keen stars were twinkling." In a letter dated June 18, 1822, speaking of his cruises "in the evening wind under the summer moon,' he adds, "Jane brings her guitar." There is probably no other relic of a great poet so intimately associated with the arts of poetry and music, or ever will be, unless Milton's organ should turn up at a broker's or some excavating explorer should bring to light the lyre of Sappho.'

The guitar was given to the Bodleian Library by E. W. Silsbee, of Salem, Mass., who bought it of the grandson of Mrs. Williams on condition that it should be so disposed of. The composition of the poem is described by Tre.. lawny: The strong light streamed through the opening of the trees. One of the pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly hidden, sat the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie that he did not hear my approach. The day I found Shelley in the pine-forest he was writing verses on a guitar. I picked up a fragment, but could only make out the first two lines. It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together "in most admired disorder; it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overrun with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius.' The poem was published by Medwin, in two parts, The Athenæum, 1832, and Fraser's, 1833.

ARIEL to Miranda:

...

Take

This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain.
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,

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To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell
Than deserted Ariel.
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth
Ariel guides you o'er the sea
Of life from your nativity.
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps and served your
will;

Now in humbler, happier lot,
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned, for some fault of his,
In a body like a grave.

From you, he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.

The artist who this idol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree
Oh, that such our death may be !
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again:

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50

From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star,

The artist wrought this loved guitar,
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully,
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamoured tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learned all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,

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The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound,
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way.
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For our beloved Jane alone.

TO JANE

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90

Shelley sent the lines to Mrs. Williams with a note. I sat down to write some words for an ariette which might be profane; but it was in vain to struggle with the ruling spirit who compelled me to speak of things sacred to and to Wilhelm Meister's indulgence. I yours commit them to your secrecy and your mercy, and will try to do better another time.'

The poem was published in part by Medwin, The Athenæum, 1832, and complete by Mrs. Shelley in her second collected edition, 1839.

The past and future were forgot,
As they had been, and would be, not.
But soon, the guardian angel gone,
The dæmon reassumed his throne
In my faint heart. I dare not speak
My thoughts, but thus disturbed and
weak

I sat and saw the vessels glide
Over the ocean bright and wide,
Like spirit-wingèd chariots sent
O'er some serenest element
For ministrations strange and far;
As if to some Elysian star

They sailed for drink to medicine
Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.
And the wind that winged their flight
From the land came fresh and light,
And the scent of wingèd flowers,
And the coolness of the hours

Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,
Were scattered o'er the twinkling bay.
And the fisher with his lamp

And spear about the low rocks damp
Crept, and struck the fish which came
To worship the delusive flame.
Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
Extinguishes all sense and thought
Of the regret that pleasure leaves,
Destroying life alone, not peace!

Under FRAGMENTS are included, with a few exceptions, incomplete poems, sketches and cancelled passages, and those more inchoate passages which have been recovered from Shelley's notebooks. The exceptions are the Prologue to Hellas, which has been put with that drama, A Vision of the Sea, published by Shelley with the poems accompanying Prometheus Unbound, and five pieces, To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 1814, Death, An Allegory, On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, and Evening, Pisa, which, though lacking a word or a line, are in effect complete. The order of the FRAGMENTS is not strictly chronological in the first division, and is altogether arbitrary in the second. The

I

THE DÆMON OF THE WORLD

Nec tantum prodere vati, Quantum scire licet. Venit ætas omnis in unam Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot sæcula pectus. LUCAN, PHARS. v. 176-178.

Shelley in his preface to Alastor, where this poem was published, says: 'The Fragment

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40

dates assigned are those generally accepted, but, as a rule, they are conjectural and approximate only, not exact. The text is derived from the editions of Mrs. Shelley, the studies of Dr. Garnett in the Boscombe MSS., published by him mainly in Relics of Shelley, 1862, or by Rossetti, 1870, and Rossetti's own studies both in the same and other MSS. of which the results were given in his edition. A few pieces, originally published elsewhere, were also gath ered by Rossetti and Forman in their editions, and Forman was enabled to add something more from independent MSS. The date and original publication of each piece are briefly indicated under each poem.

entitled The Damon of the World is a detached part of a poem which the author does not intend for publication. The metre in which it is composed is that of Samson Agonistes and the Italian pastoral drama, and may be considered as the natural measure into which poetical conceptions, expressed in harmonious language, necessarily fall.' The poem is part of a revi sion of Queen Mab.