Long lingering on a work so strange, Has undergone so bright a change.

How do I feel my happiness?
I cannot tell, but they may guess
Whose every gloomy feeling gone,
Friendship and passion feel alone;
Who see mortality's dull clouds
Before affection's murmur fly,
Whilst the mild glances of her eye
Pierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds
The spirit's inmost sanctuary.

O thou! whose virtues latest known,
First in this heart yet claim'st a throne;
Whose downy sceptre still shall share
The gentle sway with virtue there;
Thou fair in form, and pure in mind,
Whose ardent friendship rivets fast
The flowery band our fates that bind,
Which incorruptible shall last
When duty's hard and cold control
Had thawed around the burning soul,
The gloomiest retrospects that bind
With crowns of thorn the bleeding mind,
The prospects of most doubtful hue
That rise on Fancy's shuddering view,
Are gilt by the reviving ray
Which thou hast flung upon my day.

To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then

Shall holy friendship (for what other name May love like ours assume ?), not even then

Shall custom so corrupt, or the cold forms Of this desolate world so harden us,

As when we think of the dear love that binds

Our souls in soft communion, while we know

Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we say

Unblushingly a heartless compliment, Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,

Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve
That knits our love to virtue. Can those

by air, and boxes and green bottles by water, containing his Declaration of Rights, and Devil's Walk. Both this and the next poem were published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated 1812.

BRIGHT ball of flame that through the gloom of even

Silently takest thine ethereal way,
And with surpassing glory dimm'st each

ray Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven,

Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom, Whilst that unquenchable is doomed to glow

A watch-light by the patriot's lonely

The hell-hounds, Murder, Want and Woe,
Forever hungering flocked around;
From Spain had Satan sought their food,
'T was human woe and human blood!

XXVII

Hark! the earthquake's crash I hear, Kings turn pale, and Conquerors start, Ruffians tremble in their fear,

For their Satan doth depart.

XXVIII

This day fiends give to revelry

To celebrate their King's return, And with delight its sire to see

Hell's adamantine limits burn.

XXIX

But were the Devil's sight as keen
As Reason's penetrating eye,
His sulphurous Majesty I ween,
Would find but little cause for joy.

XXX

For the sons of Reason see

That, ere fate consume the Pole, The false Tyrant's cheek shall be Bloodless as his coward soul.

FRAGMENT OF A SONNET

FAREWELL TO NORTH DEVON

Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated August, 1812.

Where man's profane and tainting hand Nature's primeval loveliness has marred, And some few souls of the high bliss debarred

Which else obey her powerful command; mountain piles

That load in grandeur Cambria's emerald vales.

ON LEAVING LONDON FOR

WALES

Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated November, 1812.

HAIL to thee, Cambria ! for the unfettered wind

Which from thy wilds even now methinks I feel,

Chasing the clouds that roll in wrath be

hind,

And tightening the soul's laxest nerves to steel;

True mountain Liberty alone may heal The pain which Custom's obduracies bring, And he who dares in fancy even to steal One draught from Snowdon's ever sacred spring

Blots out the unholiest rede of worldly witnessing.

And shall that soul, to selfish peace resigned,

So soon forget the woe its fellows share? Can Snowdon's Lethe from the freeborn mind

So soon the page of injured penury tear?

Does this fine mass of human passion dare

To sleep, unhonoring the patriot's fall, Or life's sweet load in quietude to bear While millions famish even in Luxury's