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Date, 1820. Published in part by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and the remainder by Garnett, 1862, who adds a note: Fiordispina and the piece which I have ventured to entitle To His Genius (using the latter word in the sense of Saluwv) may be regarded as preliminary, though unconscious studies, for this crowning work [Epipsychidion]. This is indicated by the general similarity among the three, as well as by the fact that very many lines now found in Epipsychidion have been transferred to it from the others. Most of these have been omitted from the poem as now published; but some instances will be observed in the second, which was probably the earlier in point of date. Fiordispina seems to have been written during the first days of Shelley's acquaintance with Emilia Viviani, who is also the Ginevra of the poem thus entitled.'

THE season was the childhood of sweet June,

Whose sunny hours from morning until

noon

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As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they When, once of mortal [venture] disarrayed, love, The naked soul goes wandering here and

which did reprove

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The childish pity that she felt for them, And a remorse that from their stem She had divided such fair shapes made A feeling in the which was a shade Of gentle beauty on the flowers; there lay All gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay.

rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms, And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes The livery of unremembered snow Violets whose eyes have drunk

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there Through the wide deserts of Elysian air? The violet dies not till it'

THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE

Date, 1819. Published by Garnett, 1862.

AT the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapped in sweet wild melodies -
Like an exhalation wreathing
To the sound of air low-breathing
Through Eolian pines, which make
A shade and shelter to the lake
Whence it rises soft and slow;
Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow
In the harmony divine

Of an ever-lengthening line
Which enwrapped her perfect form
With a beauty clear and warm.

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AND many there were hurt by that strong boy;

His name, they said, was Pleasure. And near him stood, glorious beyond mea

sure,

Four Ladies who possess all empery
In earth and air and sea;

Nothing that lives from their award is free.

Their names will I declare to thee, -
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear;
And they the regents are

Of the four elements that frame the heart, —

And each diversely exercised her art
By force or circumstance or sleight
To prove her dreadful might
Upon that poor domain.

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Desire presented her [false] glass, and then
The spirit dwelling there
Was spellbound to embrace what seemed
so fair

Within that magic mirror;

And, dazed by that bright error,

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