Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow,
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung

And filled with frozen light the chasm below.

FRAGMENT IV.

THOU art the wine whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,

Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew ;-
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls

Investest1 it; and when the heavens are blue
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue

Its desarts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some bright robe;-thou ever soarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air

In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest

That which from thee they should implore:-the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts
The strong have broken-yet where shall any seek

A garment whom thou clothest not?

1 In the Posthumous Poems this line stands thus, a foot short,

Invests it; and when heavens are bluebut in the collected editions it is given as in the text. Mr. Rossetti substitutes investeth for investest.

10

15

5

FRAGMENT OF A LATER PART.1

HER hair was brown, her spherèd eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon;

Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came
The light from them, as when tears of delight
Double the western planet's serene flame.

LINES.1

I.

THE cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow,

The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

II.

The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest

On the bare thorn's breast,

Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack

Which the frost had made between.

III.

Thine eyes glowed in the glare

Of the moon's dying light;

As a fen-fire's beam,

On a sluggish stream,

1 Placed by Mrs. Shelley among the vember, 1815," inscribed at the end. "Early Poems," with the date "No

Gleams dimly-so the moon shone there,

And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair That shook in the wind of night.

IV.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed

On thy dear head

Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie

Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

First our pleasures die-and then
Our hopes, and then our fears-and when

1 Mrs. Shelley places this poem among those of 1820.

These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust clains dust-and we die too.

IV.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish,
Such is our rude mortal lot-
Love itself would, did they not.

LINES. 1

1.

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.

II.

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

But we yet stand

In a lone land,

Like tombs to mark the memory

Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee2
In the light of life's dim morning.

1 Mrs. Shelley places this among poems of 1817: in the Posthumous Poems it is dated at the end," Novem

ber 5th, 1817."

2 In Mr. Rossetti's edition flee is changed to fly.