Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; - or how

You listened to some interrupted flow Of visionary rhyme, in joy and pain Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain, 169

With little skill perhaps; or how we sought Those deepest wells of passion or of thought Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,

Staining their sacred waters with our tears,

Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed.
Or how I, wisest lady! then indued
The language of a land which now is
free,

And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,

Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud, And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,

'My name is Legion!'. tongue

that majestic

180

Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations, and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the

sound

-

This world would smell like what it is -8 tomb;

Who is what others seem; his room no doubt

Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, With graceful flowers tastefully placed about,

And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,

The gifts of the most learned among some dozens

Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.

And there is he with his eternal puns, Which beat the dullest brain for smiles,

Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, 'I'm poor !'
Or oft in graver mood, when he will
look

Things wiser than were ever read in book,
Except in Shakespeare's wisest tender-

ness.

You will see Hogg, - and I cannot express

279

In circles quaint and ever changing dance, Like winged stars, the fireflies flash and glance,

Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed, a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way;
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance - and a
bird

Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet I know none else that sings so sweet as it

At this late hour; — and then all is still. Now Italy or London, which you will! 291

Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have

My house by that time turned into a grave Of dead despondence and low-thoughted

care,

And all the dreams which our tormentors

are;

Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock and Smith were there,

With every thing belonging to them fair! — We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;

And ask one week to make another week As like his father, as I'm unlike mine, 300 Which is not his fault, as you may divine. Though we eat little flesh and drink no

wine,

The revolutionary uprisings of this year affected Shelley as powerfully as the Manchester Riot of 1819, and this poem is the fruit of that fleeting renascence of political hope so often illustrated in his verse. He composed it at the Baths of San Giuliano, August 17-25, and it was published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Shelley added a note to the poem, as follows: The author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of the animating event.'

EPODE I a

I STOOD within the city disinterred;

And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls