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.

FRAGMENT OF A SONNET

TO HARRIET

Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated August 1, 1812.

EVER as now with Love and Virtue's glow May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,

Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow

Which force from mine such quick and warm return.

TO HARRIET

Published in part with Notes to Queen Mab, 1813, and completed by Forman, 1876, and Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887; dated 1812.

Ir is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven More perfectly will give those nameless joys

Which throb within the pulses of the blood And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth

Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path

Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,

Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits Which mark the bounds of time and of the

space

When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn

Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me, Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven, And Heaven is Earth? - will not thy glowing cheek,

Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine, And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame

Of my corporeal nature, through the soul Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give

The longest and the happiest day that fate Has marked on my existence but to feel One soul-reviving kiss. . . . O thou most dear,

'Tis an assurance that this Earth is Hea

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

tomb;

A ray of courage to the oppressed and