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

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

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

Fragment of a Sonnet to Harriet. Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated August 1, 1812.

To Harriet. Published, 5-13, by Forman, 58-69, by Shelley, Notes to Queen Mab, 1813, and entire by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, dated 1812.

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,

The cold hand

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 Heaven,
And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed
Which springeth here beneath such love as ours.
Harriet let death all mortal ties dissolve,
But ours shall not be mortal!
Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds
Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse
Of common souls lives but a summer's day;
It dies, where it arose, upon this earth.
But ours! oh, 'tis the stretch of fancy's hope
To portray its continuance as now,
Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age
Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given
A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow
Which blazing on devotion's pinnacle
Makes virtuous passion supersede the power
Of reason; nor when life's æstival sun
To deeper manhood shall have ripened me;
Nor when some years have added judgment's store
To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire

Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then

Shall holy friendship (for what other name
May love like ours assume ?), not even then
Shall custom so corrupt, or the cold forms
Of this desolate world so harden us,

As when we think of the dear love that binds
Our souls in soft communion, while we know
Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we say
Unblushingly a heartless compliment,

Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,
Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve

That knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes,
Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart
To purify its purity, e'er bend

To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears?
Never, thou second self! Is confidence

So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt
The mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time,
Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not

By month or moments thy ambiguous course.
Another may stand by me on thy brink,
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken,
Which pauses at my feet. The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being; if I wake no more,

My life more actual living will contain

Than some gray veterans of the world's cold school,

Whose listless hours unprofitably roll
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,
Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude,
Freedom, Devotedness and Purity!
That life my spirit consecrates to you.

SONNET

TO A BALLOON LADEN WITH KNOWLEDGE

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 poor; A spark, though gleaming on the hovel's hearth, Which through the tyrant's gilded domes shall roar; A beacon in the darkness of the Earth;

A sun which, o'er the renovated scene,

Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been.

SONNET

ON LAUNCHING SOME BOTTLES FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BRISTOL CHANNEL

VESSELS of heavenly medicine! may the breeze Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore ; Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar

Sonnet: To a Balloon laden with Knowledge. Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, dated August, 1812.

Sonnet, On launching some Bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel. Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, dated August, 1812.

Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;
And oh! if Liberty e'er deigned to stoop

From yonder lowly throne her crownless brow, Sure she will breathe around your emerald

group

The fairest breezes of her west that blow. Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight,

Her heaven-born flame in suffering Earth will light,

Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole,
And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst
To see their night of ignorance dispersed.

THE DEVIL'S WALK

A BALLAD

I

ONCE, early in the morning,

Beelzebub arose,

With care his sweet person adorning,
He put on his Sunday clothes.

II

He drew on a boot to hide his hoof,

He drew on a glove to hide his claw, His horns were concealed by a Bras Chapeau, And the Devil went forth as natty a Beau As Bond-street ever saw.

The Devil's Walk. Published by Shelley, 1812.