Calm Thoughts

E gentle visitations of calm thought

Moods like the memories of

happier earth,

Which come arrayed in thoughts of little

worth,

Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought,

But that the clouds depart and stars remain, While they remain, and ye, alas, depart!

To William Shelley

HY 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.

Memory

ND where is truth? On tombs?

for such to thee

Has been my heart- and thy dead memory

Has lain from childhood, many a changeful

year

Unchangingly preserved and buried there.

Fragment: Poetry and
Music

OW sweet it is to sit and read the

tales

Of mighty poets and to hear the while

Sweet music, which when the attention fails

Fills the dim pause

Cancelled Stanza of the
Mask of Anarchy

(For which Stanzas lxviii., lxix. have been substituted)
ROM the cities where from caves,
Like the dead from putrid graves,
Troops of starvelings gliding come,
Living Tenants of a tomb.

Fragment: A Tale Untold

NE sung of thee who left the tale

untold,

Like the false dawns which per

ish in the bursting;

Like empty cups of wrought and dædal gold,

Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.

Fragment: A Roman's

Chamber

I.

IN the cave which wild weeds cover Wait for thine ethereal lover; For the pallid moon is waning, O'er the spiral cypress hanging, And the moon no cloud is staining.

II.

It was once a Roman's chamber,

Where he kept his darkest revels,

And the wild weeds twine and clamber;
It was then a chasm for devils.

HELLEY loved the people; and respected them as often more virtuous, as always more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than the great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side. He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his earnestness, and