And where a little terrace from its bowers Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon flowers Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er The liquid marble of the windless lake ; And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar Under the leaves which their green garments make, They come. 'Tis Helen's home, and clean and white,
Like one which tyrants spare on our own land In some such solitude; its casements bright Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun, And even within 'twas scarce like Italy.
And when she saw how all things there were planned
As in an English home, dim memory
Disturbed poor Rosalind; she stood as one Whose mind is where his body cannot be, Till Helen led her where her child yet slept, And said, "Observe, that brow was Lionel's, Those lips were his, and so he ever kept One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it. You cannot see his eyes - they are two wells Of liquid love. Let us not wake him yet." Rut Rosalind could bear no more, and wept A shower of burning tears which fell upon His face, and so his opening lashes shone With tears unlike his own, as he did leap In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.
So Rosalind and Helen lived together Thenceforth-changed in all else, yet friends again, Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather They wandered in their youth through sun and rain.
And after many years, for human things Change even like the ocean and the wind, Her daughter was restored to Rosalind, And in their circle thence some visitings Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene. A lovely child she was, of looks serene, And motions which o'er things indifferent shed The grace and gentleness from whence they came. And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed From the same flowers of thought, until each mind Like springs which mingle in one flood became ; And in their union soon their parents saw The shadow of the peace denied to them. And Rosalind - for when the living stem Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe The pale survivors followed her remains Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
Up the cold mountain she was wont to call Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,
Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
The last, when it had sunk; and through the
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home, Whose sad inhabitants each year would come, With willing steps climbing that rugged height, And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite,
Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light;
Such flowers as in the wintry memory bloom Of one friend left adorned that frozen tomb.
Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould, Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led Into the peace of his dominion cold.
She died among her kindred, being old. And know, that if love die not in the dead As in the living, none of mortal kind Are blessed as now Helen and Rosalind.
The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring,
Are saturated not-nor Love with tears.
Julian and Maddalo was first published in Mrs. Shelley's edition of the Posthumous Poems, London, 1824. The poem was composed at Este, in the fall of 1818, after Shelley's first visit to Venice. It was originally intended to be published in Leigh Hunt's Examiner; but this design was abandoned and Shelley sent it to Hunt, August 15, 1819, to be published, without his name, by Ollier. In May and December, 1820, and February, 1821, he wrote to Ollier about it, but without result. Mrs. Shelley's text, 1824, is modified by the MS. sent to Hunt, discovered by Mr. Townshend Mayer and minutely described by Forman in his edition. Julian and Maddalo, it is hardly necessary to remark, are Shelley and Byron, and the child, Allegra, Byron's daughter by Miss Clairemont.
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