* I And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak: Time may interpret to his silent years. Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, And in the light thine ample forehead wears, And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy ls whispered, to subdue my fondest fears : And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see lamp of vestal fire burning internally.

12. They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child. I wonder not—for One then left this earth Whose life was like a setting planet mild, Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled Of its departing glory; still her fame Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.

13. One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, Which was the echo of three thousand years; And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, As some lone man who in a desert hears The music of his home:—unwonted fears Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares, Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place.

14. Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind! If there must be no response to my cry— If men must rise and stamp with fury blind On his pure name who loves them,--thou and I, Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night, Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight, That burn from year to year with unextinguish'd light.

CAN TO I.

I. When the last hope of trampled France had fail'd Like a brief dream of unremaining glory, From visions of despair I rose, and scaled The peak of an aerial promontory, Whose cavern'd base with the vext surge was hoary; And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken Each cloud, and every wave —but transitory The calm : for sudden, the firm earth was shaken, As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken.

II. So, as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder Burst in far peals along the waveless deep, When, gathering fast, around, above and under, Long trains of tremulous mist began to creep, Until their complicating lines did steep The orient sun in shadow :—not a sound Was heard; one horrible repose did keep The forests and the floods, and all around Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground. III. Hark! "t is the rushing of a wind that sweeps Earth and the ocean. See the lightnings yawn Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lash'd deeps Glitter and boil beneath : it rages on, One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown, Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by. There is a pause—the sea-birds, that were gone Into their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy What calm has fall'n on earth, what light is in the sky.

IW. For, where the irresistible storm had cloven That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven Most delicately, and the ocean green, Beneath that opening spot of blue serene, Quiver'd like burning emerald: calm was spread On all below; but far on high, between Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds sled, Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.

V. For ever, as the war became more fierce Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high, That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce The woof of those white clouds, which seem'd to lie Far, deep, and motionless; while through the sky The pallid semicircle of the moon Past on, in slow and moving majesty; Its upper horn array'd in mists, which soon But slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.

Wi. I could not chuse but gaze; a fascination Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew My fancy thither, and in expectation Of what I knew not, I remain'd :—the hue Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue, Suddenly stain'd with shadow did appear; A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew, Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.

Wii.

Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains,
Dark, vast, and overhanging, on a river
Which there collects the strength of all its fountains,
Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth

quiver,
Sails, oars, and stream, tending to one endeavour;
So, from that chasm of light a winged Form
On all the winds of heaven approaching ever
Floated, dilating as it came: the storm
Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and

obstacles. In pecuniary matters he was liberal. Uncharitable indeed must that man have been who doubted the excellence of his intentions, or charged him with wilful error: who then shall judge a being of whom this may be said, save his Creator—who that lives in the way he sees others live, without regard to the mode being right or wrong, shall charge him with crime, who tries to reconcile together his life and his aspirations after human perfectibility? Shelley had his faults as well as other men, but on the whole it appears that his deviations from the vulgar routine form, the great sum of the charges made against him. His religious sentiments were between him and his God. The writings of Shelley are too deep to be popular, but there is no reader possessing taste and judgment who will not do homage to his pen. He was a poet of great power, he felt intensely, and his works every where display the ethereal spirit of genius of a rare order—abstract, perhaps, but not less powerful; his is the poetry of intellect, not that of the Lakers; his theme is the high one of intellectual nature and lofty feeling, not of waggoners or idiot children. His faults in writing are obvious, but equally so are his beauties. He is too much of a philosopher, and dwells too much upon favourite images, that draw less upon our sympathies than those of social life. His language is lofty, and no one knows better how to cull, arrange, and manage the syllables of his native tongue. He thoroughly understood metrical composition. Shelley began to publish prematurely, as we have already stated, at the early age of 15 ; but it was not till about the year 18, 1 or 1812 that he seems first to have devoted his attention to poetical composition. To enumerate his poetical works here would be a useless task, as they will be found in the collection of his poems appended. His a Prometheus Unbound - is a noble work; his a Cenci" and • Adonais - are his principal works in point of merit. Love was one of his favourite themes, as it is with all poets, and he has ever touched it with a master-hand. The subject of the - Cenci - is badly selected, but it is nobly written, and admirably sustained. Faults it has, but they are amply redeemed by its beauties. It is only from the false clamour raised against him during his life-time, that his poems have not been more read. No scholar, no one having the slightest pretensions to true taste in poetry can be without them. It may be boldly prophesied that they will one day be more read than they have ever yet been, and more understood In no nation but England do the reading public suffer others to judge for them, and pin their ideas of the defects or beauties of their natioual writers

upon the partial diatribes of hired pens, and the splenetic out-pourings of faction. It is astonishing how the nation of Newton and Locke is thus contented to suffer itself to be deceived and misled by literary Machiavelism. The following preface to the author's Posthumous Poems contains much to interest the admirers of his genius. The circumstance of its being from the pen of Mrs Shelley will still farther recommend it :— • It had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems of Mr Shelley, to have accompanied them by a biographical notice; as it appeared to me, that at this moment a narration of the events of my husband's life would come more gracefully from other hands than mine, I applied to Mr Leigh Hunt. The distinguished friendship that Mr shelley felt for him, and the enthusiastic affection with which Mr Leigh Hunt clings to his friend's memory, seemed to point him out as the person best calculated for such an undertaking. His absence from this country, which prevented our mutual explanation, has unfortunately rendered my scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that, on soine other occasion, he will pay this tribute to his lost friend, and sincerely regret that the volume which I edit has not been honoured by its insertion. • The comparative solitude in which Mr Shelley lived, was the occasion that he was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause, which he considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of the moral and physical state of mankind, was the chief reason why he, like other illustrious reformers, was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man was ever more devoted than he, to the endeavour of making those around him happy; no man ever possessed friends more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful world did not feel his loss, and the gap it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous sea above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent powers of intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable: the wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone for ever! He is to them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind in the memory, is worth all the realities that society can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let them appeal to any one who had ever known him : to see him was to love him; and his presence, like itburiel's spear. was alone sufficient to disclose the falsehood of the tale. which his enemies whispered in the ear of the ignorant world. • His life was spent in the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts of kiudness and affection. profound metaphysician : much scientific knowledge, he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the history and habits of every production of the earth; he could interpret without a fault each appearance in the sky, and the varied phaenomena of heaven and earth filled him with deep emotion. He made his study and reading-room of the shadowed copse, the stream, the lake and the water-fall. Ill health and continual pain preyed upon his powers; and the solitude in which we lived, particularly on our first arrival in Italy, although congenial to his feelings, must frequently have weighed upon his spirits: those beautiful and affecting ‘Lines, written in dejection at Naples,' were composed at such an interval; but when in health, his spirits were buoyant and youthful to an extraordinary degree. • Such was his love fo, nature, that every page of his poetry is associated in the minds of his friends with the loveliest scenes of the countries which he inhabited. In early life he visited the most beautiful parts of this country and Ireland. Afterwards the Alps of Switzerland became his inspirers. “Prometheus Unbound was written among the deserted and flower-grown ruins of Rome; and when he made his home under the Pisan hills, their roofless recesses harboured him as he composed “The Witch of Atlas, “Adonais,' and “Hellas." In the wild but beautiful Bay of Spezia, the winds and waves which he loved became his playmates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered it, and sitting beneath their shelter wrote “the Triumph of life, the last of his productions. The beauty but strangeness of this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few selected friends, our entire sequestration from the rest of the world, all contributed to render this period of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am convinced that the two months we passed there were the happiest he had ever known : his health even rapidly inproved, and he was never better than when I last saw him, full of spirits and joy, embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy. I was to have accompanied him, but illness confined me to my room, and thus put the seal on my misfortune. His vessel bore out of sight with a favourable wind, and I remained awaiting his

• He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices towards his friend, and enjoying with keen

delight the renewal of their intercourse. He then

embarked with Mr Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his pleasures and of his fate, to return to us. We waited for them in vain; the sea by its restless moaning seemed to desire to inform us of what we would not learn :——but a veil may well be drawn over such misery. The real anguish of these moments transcended all the fictions that the most glowing imagination ever pourtrayed : our seclusion, the savage nature of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our immediate vicinity to the troubled sea, combined to embue with strange horror our days of uncertainty. The truth was at last known, a truth that made our loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a pall. Every heart echoed the deep lament; and my only consolation was in the praise and earnest love that each voice bestowed and each countenance demonstrated for him we had lost, -not, I fondly hope, for ever : his unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of the continuation of his being, although in an altered form. Rome received his ashes; they are deposited beneath its weed-grown wall, and ‘the world's sole monument' is enriched by his remains.

“Julian and Maddalo,” “The Witch of Atlas,’ and most of the Translations, were written some years ago, and, with the exception of “The Cyclops,' and the Scenes from the ‘Magico Prodigioso, may be considered as having received the author's ultimate corrections. “The Triumph of Life' was his last work, and was left in so unfinished a state, that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty. Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied : I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition.

• I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some of the most imperfect among these; but I frankly own, that I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me, than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel secure that the Lovers of Shelley's Poetry (who know how more than any other poet of the present day every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank me : 1 consecrate this volume to them.

• MARY W. SHELLEY.

* London, June 1st, 1824. "

PREFACE.

The Poem which I now present to the world, is an attempt from which I scarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established fame might fail without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper of the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live. I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the etherial combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of kindling within the bosoms of my readers, a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something tood, which neither violence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever totally extinguish among mankind. r For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures, and appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions, to the common sympathies of every human breast. I have made no attempt to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present governing mankind by methodical and systematic argument. I would only awaken the feelings so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first Canto, which is purely introductory), is narrative, not didactic. It is a succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind; its influence in resining and making pure the most daring and uncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the senses; its impatience at - all the oppressions which are done under the sun;" its tendency to awaken public hope and to enlighten and

improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the bloodless dethronement of their oppressors, and the unveiling of the religious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission; the tranquillity of successful patriotism, and the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the confederacy of the Rulers of the World, and the restoration of the copelled Dynasty by foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots, and the victory of established power; the consequences of legitimate despotism, civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter extinction of the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the advocates of Liberty; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of ignorance and error, and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And if the lofty passions with which it has been my scope to distinguish this story, shall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an ardent thirst for excellence, an interest profound and strong, such as belongs to no meaner desires—let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness for human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the business of the poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the enthusiasm arising out of those images and feelings, in the vivid presence of which within his own mind, consists at once his inspiration and his reward. The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes of men during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed, that whole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and misery, because a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves for centuries, were incapable of conducting themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some of their festers were partially loosened. That their con