Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear Their portion of the toil which he of old Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem stem Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head; When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread Was so transparent that the scene came through, That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn Under the self-same bough, and heard as there 35 Bathed, Mrs. Shelley, 1814. Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, Thick strewn with summer dust; and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the multitude, and so Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear; some Seeking the object of another's fear; And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Of their own shadow walked, and called it death; But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw Or birds within the noonday ether lost, Upon that path where flowers never grew, Out of their mossy cells forever burst, With overarching elms, and caverns cold, And violet banks where sweet dreams brood; but they Pursued their serious folly as of old. And, as I gazed, methought that in the way When the south wind shakes the extinguished day; And a cold glare, intenser than the noon But icy cold, obscured with blinding light The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon When on the sunlit limits of the night Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, 63 shunned, Boscombe MS. || spurned, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form So came a chariot on the silent storm Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom The guidance of that wonder-winged team; The music of their ever-moving wings. All the four faces of that charioteer Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, Of all that is, has been or will be done; 84 its her, Rossetti. The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast, Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance, The million with fierce song and maniac dance Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea upon the free Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear. Nor wanted here the just similitude Of a triumphal pageant, for, where'er The chariot rolled, a captive multitude Was driven; all those who had grown old in power Or misery; all who had their age subdued By action or by suffering, and whose hour All those whose fame or infamy must grow All but the sacred few who could not tame 109 thunder, Boscombe MS. || thunder's, Mrs. Shelley, 18391. 112 greet, Boscombe MS. || meet, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. |