"To lighten a strange load!"-No human ear
Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran,
Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,
Glassy and dark.-And that divine old man

Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake,
Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest-
And with a calm and measured voice he spake,

And with a soft and equal pressure, prest
That cold lean hand:-"Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon then lingering in the west

50

55

"Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea? 'Tis just one year-sure thou dost not forget

"Then Plato's words of light in thee and me Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east, For we had just then read-thy memory

"Is faithful now-the story of the feast;
And Agathon and Diotima seemed
From death and dark forgetfulness released.

60

FRAGMENT III.

'TWAS at the season when the Earth upsprings From slumber, as a spherèd angel's child, Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,

Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems-
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled

5

To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove
Waxed green-and flowers burst forth like starry beams;-

The grass in the warm sun did start and move,
And sea-buds burst beneath1 the waves serene :-
How many a one, though none be near to love,

10

Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
In any mirror-or the spring's young minions,
The winged leaves amid the copses green;-

How many a spirit then puts on the pinions
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
And his own steps-and over wide dominions

15

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
More fleet than storms-the wide world shrinks below, 20
When winter and despondency are past.

'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase

Past the white Alps-those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow;-beside the ways

The waterfalls were voiceless-for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
Or by the curdling winds-like brazen wings

1 In the Posthumous Poems, under,-in the collected editions, beneath.

25

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

30

5

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

10

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

15

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 substituted investeth for investest.

2 Mr. Rossetti substituted shadows. I know of no authority for this, and do not believe Shelley did or would sacrifice sound to grammar by the introduction of the s. The grammar is also quite characteristic without it.

FRAGMENT OF A LATER PART.1

66

HER hair was brown, her spherèd eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
Like the dim orb of the eclipsèd 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.2

1 Mrs. Shelley says the idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor.” She adds, "In the first sketch of the Poem he named it Pandemos and Urania. Athanase seeks through the world the One whom he may love. He meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a lady, who appears to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus, who,

VOL. III.

K

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 fenfire's beam on a sluggish stream,
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

1 Given under the title November 1815 and with the signature "Σ" in The Literary Pocket-Book for 1823; and placed by Mrs. Shelley among the "Early Poems," with the date "November, 1815," inscribed at the end. There is but one verbal varia

tion between the original issue and Mrs. Shelley's, namely in stanza III, where the Pocket-Book reads raven hair, -Mrs. Shelley tangled hair. The stanzas are set in the Pocket-Book as above; but in other editions the third line is divided into two. Most likely