ON F. G.

HER voice did quiver as we parted,

Yet knew I not that heart was broken From which it came, and I departed Heeding not the words then spoken.

Misery-O Misery,

This world is all too wide for thee.

LINES TO A CRITIC.

HONEY from silkworms who can gather,
Or silk from the yellow bee?
The grass may grow in winter weather
As soon as hate in me.

Hate men who cant, and men who pray,
And men who rail like thee;

An equal passion to repay
They are not coy like me.

Or seek some slave of power and gold,
To be thy dear heart's mate;

Thy love will move that bigot cold,
Sooner than me thy hate.

A passion like the one I prove
Cannot divided be;

I hate thy want of truth and love-
How should I then hate thee?

December, 1817.

THAT time is dead for ever, child,
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!

We look on the past,
And stare aghast

At the spectres wailing, pale, and ghast,
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

The stream we gazed on then rolled by ; Its waves are unreturning ;

November 5th, 1817.

LINES.

But we yet stand

In a lone land,

Like tombs to mark the memory

Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee In the light of life's dim morning.

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had approached so near Shelley, appears to have kindled to yet keener life the spirit of poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year. "The Revolt of Islam," written and printed, was a great effort"Rosalind and Helen" was begun-and the fragments and poems I can trace to the same period, show how full of passion and reflection were his solitary hours.

In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book, and without implements of writing, I find many such in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, and desire to trace its workings. Thus in the same book that addresses "Constantia, singing, find these lines:

My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim

Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,
Far away into the regions dim

Of rapture-as a boat with swift sails winging
Its way adown some many-winding river.

And this apostrophe to Music:

No, Music, thou art not the God of Love,
Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,
Till it becomes all music murmurs of.

In another fragment he calls it

The silver key of the fountain of tears,

Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;
Softest grave of a thousand fears,

Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,
Is laid asleep in flowers.

And then again this melancholy trace of the sad thronging thoughts, which were the well whence he drew the idea of Athanase, and express the restless, passion-fraught emotions of one whose sensibility, kindled to too intense a life, perpetually preyed upon itself:

To thirst and find no fill-to wail and wander
With short unsteady steps-to pause and ponder-
To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle
Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle;
To nurse the image of unfelt caresses

Till dim imagination just possesses
The half-created shadow.

In the next page I find a calmer sentiment, better fitted to sustain one whose whole being was love:

Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When once from our possession they must pass;
But love, though misdirected, is among

The things which are immortal, and surpass
All that frail stuff which will be-or which was.

In another book, which contains some passionate outbreaks with regard to the great injustice that he endured this year the poet writes

My thoughts arise and fade in solitude;
The verse that would invest them melts away
Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day:
How beautiful they were, how firm they stood,
Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl!

He had this year also projected a poem on the subject of Otho, inspired by the pages of Tacitus. I find one or two stanzas only, which were to open the subject:

OTHO.

Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be,
Last of the Romans, though thy memory claim
From Brutus his own glory-and on thee
Rests the full splendour of his sacred fame;
Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail,
Amid his cowering senate with thy name,
Though thou and he were great—it will avail
To thine own fame that Otho's should not fail.

'Twill wrong thee not-thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel,
Abjure such envious fame-great Otho died
Like thee-he sanctified his country's steel,
At once the tyrant and tyrannicide,

In his own blood-a deed it was to buy

Tears from all men-though full of gentle pride,
Such pride as from impetuous love may spring,
That will not be refused its offering.

I insert here also the fragment of a song, though I do ry know the date when it was written,-but it was early:

TO

Yet look on me-take not thine eyes away,
Which feed upon the love within mine own,
Which is indeed but the reflected ray

Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown.