While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Thro'many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth
I was not heard, I saw them not ; [is fed:
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstacy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even I call the phantoms of a thousand hours [now Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned Of studious zeal or love's delight [bowers Outwatched with me the envious night : They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene

When noon is past: there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which thro' the summer is not heard nor seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

MONT BLANC.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

I.

THE everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark-now glittering-now reflecting gloom-
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

II.

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep Ravine-
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast clouds, shadows, and sunbeams; awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest ;-thou dost lie,
The giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion,

71

12

The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear-an old and solemn harmony:
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which, when the voices of the desert fail,
Wraps all in its own deep eternity ;-
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion
A loud, lone sound, no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound-
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee,
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively›
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest **
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,~?
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, ~
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there ! «j

Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,-that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live. I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie

In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Speed far around and inaccessibly

Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales! »

Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,

Mount Blane appears,- still, snowy, and serene
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms

Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between 113
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, é×
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps ;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there-how hideously ~
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.-Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea 7.
Of fire envelop once this silent snow? ~
None can reply-all seems eternal now. 7
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,* ́
So solemn, so serene, that man may be
But for such faith with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood,"
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good,
Interpret or make felt, or deeply feel. 3

IV.

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,

The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower,-the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him, and all that his may be ;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:

And this, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primæval mountains,
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep,
Like snakes that watch their prey,from their far foun-
Slowly rolling on; there, many a precipice [tains,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled-dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin

Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown [down
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race

Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the Vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

V.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:-the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, [tend
Or the star-beams dart through them:- Winds con-
Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things,
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

SWITZERLAND, June 23, 1816.

SHELLEY wrote little during this year. The Poem entitled the "Sunset" was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. "The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage, by reading the Nouvelle Héloïse for the first time. The reading it on the very spot where the scenes are laid, added to the interest; and he was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and earnest enthralling interest that pervades this work. There was something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposition; and, though differing in many of the views, and shocked by others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful.

"Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following mention of this poem in his publication of the History of Six Weeks' Tour, and Letters from Switzerland :

"The poem entitled Mont Blanc,' is written by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untameable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang."

This was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual. In the list of his reading I find, in Greek: Theocritus, the Prometheus of Eschylus, several of Plutarch's Lives and the works of Lucian. In Latin: Lucretius, Pliny's Letters, the Annals and Germany of Tacitus. In French: the History of the French Revolution, by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne's Essays, and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful and instructive books in the world. The list is scanty in English works-Locke's Essay, Political Justice, and Coleridge's Lay Sermon, form nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud to me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New Testament, Paradise Lost, Spenser's Fairy Queen, and Don Quixote.

PRINCE ATHANASE.

A FRAGMENT.

PART I.

THERE was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, Had grown quite weak and grey before his time; Nor any could the restless griefs unravel

Which burned within him, withering up his prime

And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.
Not his the load of any secret crime,

For nought of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same ;
Not his the thirst for glory or command,
Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame;
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,

Had left within his soul the dark unrest:
Nor what religion fables of the grave
Feared he,-Philosophy's accepted guest.

For none than he a purer heart could have,
Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.

What sorrow, strange, and shadowy,'and unknown, Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?— If with a human sadness he did groan,

He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
And such a glorious consolation find

In others' joy, when all their own is dead: He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief, And yet, unlike all others, it is said

That from such toil he never found relief. Although a child of fortune and of power, Of an ancestral name the orphan chief,

His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower
Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,

Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.---
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse
The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate

Those false opinions which the harsh rich use To blind the world they famish for their pride; Nor did he hold from any man his dues,

But, like a steward in honest dealings tried,
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,
His riches and his cares he did divide.

Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;

Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
And to his many friends-all loved him well-
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,

If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell ;
If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes,
He neither spurned nor hated—though with fell
And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
They past like aimless arrows from his ear.-
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close

To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere
May comprehend within its wide array.
What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?

He knew not. Though his life day after day,
Was failing, like an unreplenished stream,
Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,

Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem

Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour,
Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,

Were driven within him by some secret power,
Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower,

O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war
Is levied by the night-contending winds,
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;-

Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
Which wake and feed on everliving woe,-
What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds

A mirror found,-he knew not-none could know; But on whoe'er might question him he turned The light of his frank eyes, as if to show

He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look ;
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned

The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
So that his friends soon rarely undertook

To stir his secret pain without avail ;-
For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil

Between his heart and mind,-both unrelieved Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad, others believed

That memories of an antenatal life
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell:
And others said that such mysterious grief

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell On souls like his, which owned no higher law Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible

By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
And others," "Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of memory never saw

"But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream Through shattered mines and caverns underground Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam

"Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure. Soon its exhausted waters will have found

"A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, O Athanase!-in one so good and great, Evil or tumult cannot long endure."

So spake they idly of another's state Babbling vain words and fond philosophy : This was their consolation; such debate

Men held with one another; nor did he, Like one who labours with a human woe, Decline this talk; as if its theme might be

Another, not himself, he to and fro
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
And none but those who loved him best could
know

That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless night-mare grief did sit

Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier
hold;-

And so his grief remained—let it remain-untold*.

*The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this difference.-Author's Note.

FRAGMENTS OF PRINCE ATHANASE.

PART II.

FRAGMENT I.

PRINCE Athanase had one beloved friend,
An old, old man, with hair of silver white, [blend
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and
With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight

Had spared in Greece - the blight that cramps and
And in his olive bower at noe
[blinds,-
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds

A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates
Many a drear month in a great ship-so he

With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:
"The mind becomes that which it contemplates,"

And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing

A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen

Was grass-grown-and the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:—

And as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path,
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief

And blighting hope, who with the news of death
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
She saw beneath the chesnuts, far beneath,

An old man toiling up, a weary wight;
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light

* The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor. 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, after disappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. "On his death-bed the lady, who can really reply to his soul, comes and kisses his lips."-The Death-bed of Athanase. The poet describes her

Her hair was brown, her sphered 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 frame.

This slender note is all we have to aid our imagination in shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author imaged. -M. S.

Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall, And his wan visage and his withered mien, Yet calm and gentle and majestical.

And Athanase, her child, who must have been Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed In patient silence.

FRAGMENT II.

SUCH was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
One amaranth glittering on the path of frost,
When autumn nights have nipt all weaker kinds,

Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tost,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,

The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.

And sweet and subtle talk now evermore,
The pupil and the master shared; until,
Sharing that undiminishable store,

The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill

Strange truths and new to that experienced man.
Still they were friends, as few have ever been
Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.

So in the caverns of the forest green,
Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen

By summer woodmen and when winter's roar Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war, The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,

Hanging upon the peaked wave afar,
Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,
Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star

Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,
Whilst all the constellations of the sky
Seemed reeling through the storm; they did but

seem

For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing,
And far o'er southern waves, immoveably

Belted Orion hangs-warm light is flowing From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.— "O summer eve! with power divine, bestowing

"On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness, Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm

"Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madWere lulled by thee, delightful nightingale! [ness, And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,

"And the far sighings of yon piny dale Made vocal by some wind, we feel not here.I bear alone what nothing may avail

"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

"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."

FRAGMENT III.

"Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings From slumber, as a sphered 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

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 beneath the waves serene:How many a one, though none be near to love,

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

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

"Twas at this season that Prince Athanase Pass'd the white Alps-those eagle-baffling moun

tains

Slept in their shrouds of snow;-beside the ways