Of one serene and unapproachèd star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,

Itself how low, how high beyond all height The heaven where it would perish!-and every form

That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a

storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion Out of their dreams; harmony became love soul but one.

In

every

And so this man returned with axe and saw
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves, — and from the forest tops Singing the winds to sleep—or weeping oft Fast showers of aërial water-drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness ;-
Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds :-or, where high
branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers, Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion—and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute

Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has past
To such brief unison as on the brain

One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.

The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.

Fragment: A Lost Leader

Y head is wild with weeping for a

grief

Which is the shadow of a gentle

mind.

I walk into the air (but no relief

To seek or haply, if I sought, to find; It came unsought); to wonder that a chief Among men's spirits should be cold and blind.

Or barter

I.

revenge,

Or think that ill for ill should be

repaid,

wrong for wrong, until the exchange

Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,

Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn

Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

II.

A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now.

'This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's" Histoire des Républiques Italiennes," which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.Mrs. Shelley.

III.

Another scene ere wise Etruria knew

Its second ruin through internal strife,

And tyrants through the breach of discord threw

The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,

As winter to fair flowers (though some be

poison)

So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison.

IV.

In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold

Was brimming with the blood of feuds for

sworn

At sacrament: more holy ne'er of old

Etrurians mingled with the shades forlorn Of moon-illumined forests.

V.

And reconciling factions wet their lips