'The thickest billows of that living storm I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime

Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.

'Before the chariot had begun to climb The opposing steep of that mysterious dell, Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme 471

'Of him who from the lowest depths of hell, Through every paradise and through all glory,

Love led serene, and who returned to tell

The words of hate and awe, the wondrous story

Love;

For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary,

'The world can hear not the sweet notes that move

The sphere whose light is melody to lovers,

A wonder worthy of his rhyme. The grove

These minor fragments have been recovered, often with great difficulty, principally from the Shelley MSS., by successive editors. Their general character is described by Mrs. Shelley: In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, and desire to trace its workings.' The titles are, as a rule, those given in previous editions. The dates of composition, often conjectural, and of publication, are affixed.

Mrs. Shelley describes Shelley's grief for the death of this child: 'Shelley had suffered severely from the death of our son during this summer. His heart, attuned to every kindly affection, was full of burning love for his offspring. No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were torn from him. When afterwards this child [William] died at Rome, he wrote, apropos of the English burying ground in that city: This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic ; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death. My beloved child is buried here. I envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other crushes the affections."

I

My lost William, thou in whom

Some bright spirit lived, and did That decaying robe consume Which its lustre faintly hid, Here its ashes find a tomb; But beneath this pyramid Thou art not if a thing divine

66

Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine Is thy mother's grief and mine.

II

Where art thou, my gentle child?
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds
Among these tombs and ruins wild;

Let me think that through low seeds
Of sweet flowers and sunny grass
Into their hues and scents may pass
A portion

June, 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

LINES WRITTEN FOR THE POEM TO WILLIAM SHELLEY

I

THE world is now our dwelling-place;
Where'er the earth one fading trace

Of what was great and free does keep,
That is our home!
Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race
Shall our contented exile reap;
For who that in some happy place
His own free thoughts can freely chase
By woods and waves can clothe his face
In cynic smiles? Child! we shall weep.

II

This lament,

The memory of thy grievous wrong Will fade

But genius is Omnipotent

To hallow

1818. Garnett, 1862.

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY

THY little footsteps on the sands
Of a remote and lonely shore;
The twinkling of thine infant hands
Where now the worm will feed no more;

Thy mingled look of love and glee When we returned to gaze on thee · 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed.

TO CONSTANTIA

I

THE rose that drinks the fountain dew
In the pleasant air of noon,
Grows pale and blue with altered hue

In the gaze of the nightly moon;
For the planet of frost, so cold and bright,
Makes it wan with her borrowed light.