LXV.

And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils in which those sweet ladies oft array

Their delicate limbs who would conceal from us Only their scorn of all concealment : they

Move in the light of their own beauty thus. But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

LXVI.

She all those human figures breathing there
Beheld as living spirits. To her eyes
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,

And often through a rude and worn disguise She saw the inner form most bright and fair : And then she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

LXVII.

Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm, when Tithon became grey →
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven

Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina
Had half (oh why not all?) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay-
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

LXVIII.

'Tis said in after times her spirit free
Knew what love was, and felt itself alon
But holy Dian could not chaster be

Before she stooped to kiss Endymion
Than now this Lady,-like a sexless bee,
Tasting all blossoms and confined to none :
Among those mortal forms the Wizard Maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.

LXIX.

To those she saw most beautiful she gave

Strange panacea in a crystal bowl.

They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
And lived thenceforward as if some control,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

LXX.

For, on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmer's ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral-lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery

Of second childhood's swaddling-bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,

Like one asleep in a green hermitage,―

With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,

And living in its dreams beyond the rage

Of death or life; while they were still arraying

In liveries ever new the rapid, blind,

And fleeting generations of mankind.

LXXII.

And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake
Which the sand covers. All his evil gain

The miser, in such dreams, would rise and shake Into a beggar's lap; the lying scribe

Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

LXXIII.

The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the God Apis really was a bull,

And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple-doors, and pull
The old cant down: they licensed all to speak
Whate'er they thought of hawks and cats and gecse,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.

LXXIV.

The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey. Every one

Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great emperor when the morning came;
And kissed-alas, how many kiss the same!

LXXV.

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;

Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,

Beating their swords to ploughshares :—in a band
The jailors sent those of the liberal schism

Free through the streets of Memphis-much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

LXXVI.

And timid lovers, who had been so coy

They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; And, when next day the maiden and the boy

Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy-till the tenth moon shone ;

LXXVII.

And then the Witch would let them take no ill;

Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, The Witch found one,—and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, Were torn apart (a wide wound, mind from mind) She did unite again with visions clear

Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

LXXVIII.

These were the pranks she played among the cities
Of mortal men. And what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties,
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is

A tale more fit for the weird winter-nights
Than for these garish summer-days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel. the object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas. This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes-wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested. The surpassing excellence of The Cenci had made me greatly desire that Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and dreamy spirit of the Witch of Atlas. It was not only that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own resources, and on the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because his mind overflowed, without the hope of being appreciated. I had not the most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspirations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of the many; but I felt sure that, if his poems were more addressed to the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the day would be acknowledged, and that popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues, which in those days it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious calumnies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a few unfinished verses that showed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following:

Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.

I knew that there were crimes and evil men.
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass

The hearts of others.

And, when

I went among my kind, with triple brass

Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate-a woful mass!

I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from pourtraying human passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrowed their hues