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scribe. Some of the minor poems-The Cloud,' 'The Skylark,' &c.—are imbued with a fine lyrical and poetic spirit. One striking peculiarity of his style is his constant personification of inanimate objects. In The Cenci' we have a strong and almost terrible illus tration of this feature of his poetry:

I remember,

Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
And winds with short turns down the precipice;
And in its depth there is a mighty rock
Which has from unimaginable years
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
Over a gulf, and with the agony

With which it clings, seems slowly coming down;
Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour,

Clings to the mass of life, yet clinging, leans,
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall-beneath this crag,
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns; below
You hear, but see not, an impetuous torrent
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
Cedars and yews, and pines, whose tangled hair

Is matted in one solid roof of shade

By the dark ivy's twine. At noonday here

'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.

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The Flight of the Hours in Prometheus' is equally vivid, and touched with a wild inimitable grace:

Behold!

The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night

I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds,

Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.

Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,

And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,

As if the thing they loved fled on before,

And now, even now, they clasp it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they all sweep onward.
These are the immortal Hours,

Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.

Opening of Queen Mab.

How wonderful is death,
Death and his brother sleep!
One, pale us yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn

When, throned on ocean's wave,
It blushes o'er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!

Hath then the gloomy Power,

Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,

Seized on her sinless soul?

Must then that peerless form
Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart, those azure veins
Which steal like streams along a field of

snow,

That lovely outline, which is fair
As breathing marble, perish?
Must putrefaction's breath
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight
But loathsomeness and ruin?

Spare nothing but a gloomy theme On which the lightest heart might moralise?

Or is it only a sweet slumber

Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness?
Will Ianthe wake again,
And give that faithful bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life, and rapture from her smile?

Her dewy eyes are closed,

And on their lids, whose texture fine
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs be-
neath,

The baby Sleep is pillowed:
Her golden tresses shade
The bosom's stainless pride,
Curling like tendrils of the parasite
Around a marble column.

Hark! whence that rushing sound? "Tis like the wondrous strain That round a lonely ruin swells,

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The enthusiast hears at evening! 'Tis softer than the west wind's sign "Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes Of that strange lyre whose s rings The genii of the breezes sweep.

Those lines of rainbow light

Are like the moonbeams when they fall Through some cathedral window, but the teints

Are such as may not find
Comparison on earth.

Behold the chariot of the fairy queen!
Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;
Their filmy pennous at her word they
furl,

And stop obedient to the reins of light:
These the queen of spells drew in;
She spread a charm around the spot,
And leaning graceful from the ethereal

car,

Long did she gaze, and silently,
Upon the slumbering maid.

The Cloud.*

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet birds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers
Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

"The odes To the Skylark and The Cloud, in the opinion of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his productions. They were written as his mind prompted. listening to the carolling of the bird aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames. No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits, and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects. as well as his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain; to escape from such he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt happy when he sheltered himself from the influence of human sympathies in the wildest regions of fancy. '-MRS. SHELLEY, Pref. to Poet. Works.

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack
When the morning-star shines dead.

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings;

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's tin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam proof, 1 hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march,

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow:

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die,

For after the rain, when, with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain, ·

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and upbuild it again.

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Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden.

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soulin secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glowworm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view;

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves:

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Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt-

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or wives, or mountains?

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What shapes ( sky or plain?

What love of thine own kinu? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem"
Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,"

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

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Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

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