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 illustration of this feature of his poetry: I remember, Two miles on this side of the fort, the road With which it clings, seems slowly coming down; Is matted in one solid roof of shade By the dark ivy's twine. At noonday here 'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night. 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 Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars: As if the thing they loved fled on before, And now, even now, they clasp it. Their bright locks Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee. Opening of Queen Mab. How wonderful is death, When, throned on ocean's wave, Hath then the gloomy Power, Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres, Seized on her sinless soul? snow, That lovely outline, which is fair 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 Her dewy eyes are closed, The baby Sleep is pillowed: Hark! whence that rushing sound? "Tis like the wondrous strain That round a lonely ruin swells, . Which, wandering on the echoing shore, 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 Behold the chariot of the fairy queen! And stop obedient to the reins of light: car, Long did she gaze, and silently, Upon the slumbering maid. The Cloud.* I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, I bear light shade for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 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; I sift the snow on the mountains below, In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, "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 Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 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, 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, I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone, The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 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, 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 gleam, 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, 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 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, To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not; Like a high-born maiden 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, Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves: 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? What shapes sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem' Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught: Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. |